


ex malo bonum

by arnold_layne



Category: Mötley Crüe
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Violence, Fallen Angel/Demon AU, Hurt No Comfort, I mean I know why, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Murder, Non-Consensual Alcohol Use, Restraints, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Torture, but still, demon!Mick Mars, demon!Nikki Sixx, demon!Tommy Lee, elements of Tommy Lee/Vince Neil, fallen angel!Vince Neil, graphic descriptions of wounds, hints of Nikki Sixx/Tommy Lee, okay maybe just a little bit of comfort, only SOME ok, tbh some parts of demonhood in this are based off supernatural, vinikki is NOT endgame, why are there exclusively supernatural (as a show) tags in the autosuggest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-02-01 05:02:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arnold_layne/pseuds/arnold_layne
Summary: Vince thought he knew where fallen angels go and what they become. But he never expected to go through something likethat.
Relationships: Nikki Sixx/Vince Neil
Comments: 50
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, pay attention to warnings, please! Apart from putting all of them in the tags, I'll also tag each chapter accordingly in the chapter notes. Stay safe!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence, suicide attempts, alcohol mention, drug use mention

"Did it hurt?"

"What?" Vince blinked and looked up from his shot of whiskey. He was already on his fifth, but was only slightly tipsy (must have something to do with the quick regeneration thing). The shitty bar where he was drinking himself into oblivion was dimly lit, and he had to squint to make out the face of a stranger standing behind his shoulder. The stranger’s voice was pleasant, but there was something… unsettling in it. Off-putting. _Hostile_.

"Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" he repeated smugly. His hand crawled onto Vince's shoulder and clutched it. A hot, blinding spike of something that felt like electric shock went down Vince's spine, and everything became so clear he wondered how in the world he hadn’t seen it coming. In his defense, they were faster than he thought.

"It did," Vince raised his head and looked the demon straight in the eyes, curving his lips in disgust. "A lot."

_The first was a car, a truck going down a busy highway with a very convenient pedestrian bridge over it. Vince figured out the right moment and jumped, his white Heaven robes flapping like wings behind his back. When he woke up they were no longer white, but a dark red, the color he would have assumed to be his blood if he had found a single injury on his body. But there hadn't been any. _

_He had to change his clothes after that, partly escaping humans too curious for their own good, partly no longer wanting to be reminded of what he had had and what he had lost._

"Drowning your sorrows in whisky, huh?" The demon pulled up a chair and plopped down on it, his hand sliding from Vince's shoulder down onto his arm and staying there, grazing over the skin with his claws occasionally, _oh so_ _carefully_. Vince didn't pull his arm away from the grip, although every fiber of his being protested to the touch. He could reach _that one_ pocket of his jacket with another hand just as easily. "If I were you, I would celebrate."

"You aren't me," Vince retorted indifferently, turning away from the demon and focusing on his almost empty glass.

"Not yet, sweetie." The demon grasped Vince's chin with his fingers and turned his head back to face him. Vince shook his fingers off his chin with clear revulsion. "What a pretty thing you are. You know that? Have you already come across the human concept of beauty?"

"No," Vince said listlessly. He couldn't care less about the small talk, but the demon’s intentions still weren’t clear to him and asking directly felt weirdly untimely.

"You will," the demon promised, moving closer to Vince, almost breathing into his ear, and Vince couldn’t help casting a quick look over him. Despite the lack of light, the demon’s eyes looked unnaturally green. "They're completely obsessed over it. Starving themselves to death, wasting their entire salaries on beauty products, painting their faces until they are unrecognizable, squeezing their bodies into uncomfortable clothes. It's so much fun. How did you manage to get such a good-looking body, though? All the angels I met looked like middle-aged accountants at best. Heaven is really obsessed over its employees’ purity."

"Random distribution," Vince murmured and downed his shot. The demon waved to the barista and showed him two fingers. A few moments later two shots of whisky were sent their way.

_The second time, it was the height. Vince stood atop a twenty-story building and looked down at the busy street beneath, and everything was so little and insignificant. He didn't have his wings anymore, but he could feel the rapture of flying one more time._

_Vince woke up in the hole on the pavement the shape of which resembled that of his body. He had only a few scratches and not a single bone broken. He kept touching those scratches for the next hour until they healed. _

_Last time there were no injuries. Progress._

"I'm paying, baby." The demon pulled a wallet out of the pocket of his leather jacket and slid two dollar-bills the barista's way. "Enjoy your downfall. Did you already get the concept of money? Those humans turned pieces of metal and paper into their literal gods. They're ready to die for it. How many of them, you think, are ready to die for an actual God, like real Jesus Christ, nowadays?"

_His_ name out of the mouth of this despicable creature was like a string snapping in Vince's chest, badly cutting his insides. "Don't you dare speak _His_ name," he hissed, jerking his arm away from the demon's grasp and moving his chair farther down the bar counter. If his gaze could kill, the demon’s body would already have been sprawled on the floor under the counter.

"Or what?" the demon stretched out his hand and wrapped his fingers around Vince’s elbow again, dragging him back in place. The chair legs gritted across the floor loudly, and Vince felt like all the eyes in the bar were on them now. The demon’s claws, painted in chipped black nail polish, were digging deep into his skin, but this time Vince didn’t try to wrestle away from his grip. This creature isn’t worthy of your anger, he reminded himself. "You'll tell him and he'll punish me? Funny. He no longer needs you, honey. That's why he got rid of you. Threw you out like a toy he got fed up with."

"Shut up," Vince bit his lip and looked away. Every word slashed his soul like a sword, leaving deep, bleeding, unhealable cuts. “Stop that. Just-“ _too early_, a warning flashed across his mind, but he shook it off. The demon was clearly mocking him, and Vince wasn’t going to put up with that. “just tell me what you want from me.”

_The third time, there were drugs. He tried regular pills from the pharmacy first - he heard they can cause death when consumed in excessive amounts. He woke up in the public toilet of some fast-food restaurant, in the puddle of his own vomit, with people banging on the door and shouting. Then there were other drugs, which people buy not in clean, white pharmacies with smiling women in doctor’s robes, but in dark alleys and night clubs. People didn't want to give it to Vince without money, and he could no longer use any of his previous powers, so getting them was one hell of a job. All of which was in vain, because Vince only got a short and sharp sting of pleasure across his body before descending into darkness, and then woke up, this time in a hospital, surrounded by dumbfounded doctors._

“Nothing much,” the demon smiled sweetly and almost gently tucked a stray golden lock behind Vince’s ear. The demon’s own hair was pitch-black and wild, framing the sides of his face and falling onto his forehead, but still not managing to hide the uncanny gleam in his eyes. “You’re a pretty little thing, and I like pretty little things. Let’s hook up, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Hook up?” Vince frowned, and the demon laughed sincerely.

“Sweet innocence. Don’t worry, you’ll learn. It won’t take long. You’ll enjoy it. It’s one of the things humans do all the time, to have fun or kids or both, or aiming for one and getting the other.”

Vince gave him a long, hard look, for the first time this evening. He foresaw that – well, not exactly _that_, but something of a kind – and the blade dipped in holy water was now warming in the pocket of his jacket, reacting to the demonic presence. Killing a demon was hard and usually disapproved of by the authorities – the privilege of killing belonged only to high-ranked angels, ones who could withstand the temptation of sin inevitably coming with it. It was even harder for a fallen angel devoid of the Lord’s blessing. But it was possible.

His human vessel was shorter and weaker than that of the demon. But he had the blade. He had the advantage.

"Checking me out, huh?" The demon traced his fingertips along Vince's jawline. Vince didn't flinch back. "I gotta say, I am extremely lucky with my current vessel. It gets me all the chicks."

"My human form is male."

"Doesn't matter. You're pretty, you qualify. Blond too. Love blonds." The demon grinned, his teeth slightly sharper than human's, a little bit too many of them. Devil is in the details, Vince recalled.

"Why don't you get any other human then? Why me?"

"Honey, what demon wouldn't want to bang a freshly fallen angel? It's not every day that we have visitors from up there. You reek of Heaven, blondie. There's still a lot of it in you. I wanna know how it feels."

The demon licked his lips, eyeing Vince up as though he wanted to eat him whole. Vince shuddered but didn’t look away. He wasn’t afraid of him, after all.

"Sweetheart, I'm not gonna wait for you to come to terms with it. Don't test my patience."

"What if I refuse?" Vince carefully moved the untouched shot away, barely brushing the glass with the tip of a finger. The demon didn’t comment on it, but his gaze lingered on the rejected whisky a little longer than necessary.

"Then there will be a very loud and unpleasant scene that will surely feature in every newspaper by the end of the day. I feel like you still don’t fully understand,” the demon leaned closer to Vince and almost whispered in his ear, “I will get you anyway. You can only choose how, by force or by your own will."

Vince closed his eyes, suppressing the urge to grip the handle of the blade through the jacket. He knew, of course, that demons couldn't be trusted with a conversation, let alone an agreement. He shouldn't have answered him in the first place. On the other hand, in this case. the demon wouldn't have left him alone and would have forced him to answer. He couldn't get rid of him with God’s power – he was no longer able to use it, neither could he deal with him with the help of simple, brutal force. Because he, as any angel, was against violence in general, not because the demon was half a head taller than him and had claws and sharp teeth.

Maybe it was better to just submit. Maybe the demon would be too distracted during this "hook-up", whatever he was going to do to him, and wouldn’t notice Vince pulling out the blade. Maybe.

_Submit and just let him do whatever he wants?_ something whispered quietly to him inside his head, something the invisible presence of which Vince could feel but only now got to hear. _So you would let the forces of evil run amok because you’re not supposed to beat them?_

_Yes_, Vince cut the _something_ off and turned to the demon.

"Alright," he said quietly. "It won't take long, will it?"

"It will take as much as I need, angel, and by the end you will beg for more," the demon promised complacently and pulled him up from the chair. "Come on. My car is in the parking lot."

“Isn’t that kinda… uncomfortable?” Vince raised his eyebrow, for a second actually trying to imagine two whole people trying to find enough room on the backseat.

The demon burst into laughter, but the grip on Vince’s arm remained tight. “That’s the point, baby! Quick and dirty, exactly what you angels deserve. Come on.” He headed to the door, dragging Vince along.

Once they were outside, Vince lingered a little to inhale crisp, fresh night air - most of the Earth smells were still new to him, and some of them were quite pleasant. The demon interpreted it differently.

"Nervous? Don't worry, all virgins are. You at least will probably be the first fallen angel to get rid of his virginity so quickly. Some never even get to experience it."

"Why?"

"Because they're ugly as hell, haven’t you heard me? I’m telling you,” he turned to Vince and poked him in the chest, “I’m telling you, this vessel is gonna be your best asset on this Earth. Everyone likes beautiful people. It'll make your life down here easier. Actor, singer, model, hooker – choose whatever you want. Oh, here’s my car." The demon pointed at a black, relatively small car in the farthest slot of the parking lot. "Seems small, but I can assure you, it fits our needs perfectly."

"Your needs."

"Eh, stop playing Virgin Mary. Mary Magdalene had a much better time before Jesus showed up. The girl was going places." The demon grinned at the sight of indignation on Vince's face. They approached the car, but instead of opening the door the demon backed Vince up against it, grabbed his collar and pulled him into a sloppy kiss.

Vince didn't get to know what it felt like. A belt wrapped around his throat and yanked his body backward, hitting his back against the car roof and pinning him down to it. Vince's hands flew up to the belt, scratching on it in a fruitless attempt to loosen it, but the assaulter was strong, stronger than him. And a demon as well, because the mere touch of his hands sent another spike of hot, buzzing electricity down Vince's spine.

"Hold him!" The demon who brought him here tried to grab his wrists, got a kick in the stomach and had to take a second to drag himself off the ground. The second time he tried to grab him Vince was prepared.

The demon gasped and recoiled, his hands jerking up to his chest where the blade was now buried, barely audible sizzling coming out from the wound. The one behind Vince's back almost rushed to help him, loosening his grip, but was stopped by a fierce glare of then-green eyes, now a solid black. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of Vince's hair and banged his head on the car roof so hard it dented - the head or the roof, Vince didn’t really understand, because the world blurred in front of his eyes.

The next thing he remembered was lying on the cold pavement, hot blood dripping onto his eyes. A stray lock was hanging in front of his face, all smeared in blood as well. His hands were tied by the same belt that had been wrapped around his neck. Two demons stood above him, both black-haired and tall, their eyes now pitch-black, both radiating rage so intense it heated up the air around them.

"Fucking bitch," the one from the bar spit out. "Who do you think you are to use this?" he raised the blade carefully by the handle. It was still covered in his blood, which oozed slowly from the cut in his chest and stained his shirt. Apart from that, it didn't seem to cause much harm. "You're no longer the warrior of God, blondie. You're the same as us now. Wanna see?"

He kicked Vince in the side to roll him onto his back and then drove the blade right into his shoulder. Vince thought he knew what it would feel like: he had tried cutting himself before.

He didn't expect it to burn, the same way it did in the demon's flesh.

The demons didn't even let him scream out his pain. They put something sticky on his mouth and threw him onto the backseat. The new, taller one, whose face Vince hadn't managed to make out, got behind the wheel, and the green-eyed one sat at the back with Vince, his hand gripping his arm firmly, claws digging into his skin and leaving deep red marks.

Vince didn't notice the pain. Tears streamed down his face silently while he was frantically, desperately searching for that connection he had always had deep inside his soul, the connection to _Him_.

He searched, and searched, and found nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence

"Holy shit. Can't believe you really did that."

The third demon appeared in the doorway. He was just as black-haired as other two, with eyes so strikingly blue they almost glowed in the dark room. No demon should be in possession of such an ethereal beauty, Vince found himself thinking, not being able to tear his gaze away. The demon’s human form was way older and more fragile than of the other two. But his every movement radiated strange, uncanny power that awakened some deeply hidden animal fear in Vince. It made him want to shrink and crawl away, _anything_, just to be no longer pierced through with this clear, knowing gaze. Neither of the demons who brought him there gave off an impression of such power; the blue-eyed one must have been their leader.

"You didn't believe in us?" the younger demon said with exaggerated resentment but didn’t manage to keep up the act and smiled.

"Not for a second. Let me see what you’ve got there," the older demon stepped closer, and Vince had to summon all remains of his courage to stay put. He wouldn't show them how scared he was. These damned creatures together weren’t worth a single angel’s feather.

_You're no longer an angel_, something inside him reminded. Vince pushed it back into his subconscious, but the bitter aftertaste remained.

"Dirty job, boys." The leader's fingers hooked up under Vince's chin and pushed it up, estimating the damage. An electric charge ten times as strong as the one he felt at the bar went through Vince’s whole body, making him bend over in pain, tears prickling his eyes. He was immediately pulled back up by rough hands on his arms and forced to face the blue-eyed demon again. He didn’t try to touch Vince anymore, but Vince would gladly prefer physical pain to the kind of dissection the fixed blue-eyed gaze was doing to his mind. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t help much. "Could have done it better."

"He fought back," the demon from the bar resented. "Cut me with this." He handed the blade to the older demon, who accepted it carefully, almost reverently, and lifted it up to his eyes, watching the light flicker off the cold steel.

"And you retaliated right there and then," he said disapprovingly, looking at the wound on Vince's shoulder. It was still bleeding, soaking his already blood-stained shirt.

"Well, I ain't no saint to put up with that," the green-eyed demon snapped. The leader frowned, and the air around them thickened - just a bit, but it was enough to make the demon recoil in fear. The younger demon behind his back sighed shakily. _Yeah_, Vince agreed inwardly, _an extremely stupid move_.

"I sure hope you aren't," the leader finally said a few excruciating seconds later. "But you’ve got to fix your damage. We don't want him bleeding out, right?"

"Right," the green-eyed demon agreed grimly.

"Good," the leader nodded and turned around. "Get him chained up securely,” he cast a quick look over the two demons and added sternly, “and when I say securely, I mean that you make sure he can’t get out! I'll check your work later."

"Yes, Mick." Two demons grabbed Vince again and dragged him along the corridor to the door on the other end of it. Vince obeyed them absent-mindedly, still trying to get his head around the most unfitting name a demon of such power could pick. _Mick_. Simple as that.

When the door at the end of the corridor opened and Vince was pushed inside, he expected to see some dungeon or prison for fallen angels with shackles and blood-painted walls. Instead, he saw a regular room. It wasn’t richly furnished and had a finger-thick layer of dust on the floor, but it had a bed, a closet, a table and a couple of shabby chairs. The only thing not fitting in was a heavy chain curled up in the corner like a sleeping snake.

The demons pushed Vince onto the bed, he lost his balance and fell face down on it. A pang of pain went through his shoulder, tearing a muffled cry out of him.

"Tommy, get the chain," the green-eyed demon said, digging his claws into Vince's arm and pulling him up mercilessly. It hurt even more, and the demon knew it. What’s more, he clearly enjoyed it.

So the moment the demon called Tommy turned around to reach the chain in the corner, Vince hit the green-eyed one in the jaw with his elbow. The movement strained his already hurt shoulder, but the dumbfounded expression on the demon’s face and his short, sharp cry of pain were well worth it.

Then a heavy punch threw Vince onto the bed, and the next thing he felt was cold metal enclosing around his ankle. He kicked his other leg blindly, but the demons quickly got out of his reach. One of them climbed up on top of him and pinned him to the bed with his entire body weight. The other caught his hands and freed them of the belt, only to snap bracelets in its place and attach them to the headboard. Then he grabbed his hair and tilted his head, abruptly ripping the sticky thing off his face.

Once they got off him, Vince rolled over to see what they were doing. But they just stood beside the bed and grinned, and he didn’t like those grins at all.

“Look at our little angel. He learned how to hurt others so quickly,” the green-eyed demon wiped an imaginary tear off his cheek. The red trace of Vince’s elbow on his jaw was quickly fading. “He ain’t gonna take long.”

“Hurting demons doesn’t count as a sin,” Vince spat out.

“Oh yeah? That’s what you’re saying now? What about humility? What about submitting to God’s will? Isn’t that what you angels preach?”

“Well, Nikki, he ain’t one anymore,” Tommy reminded. His voice was softer but nonetheless mocking. “A little bit of violence is, apparently, alright now.”

“Progress,” Nikki walked round the bed and plopped down on it near Vince’s face. His fingers found the cut in the angel’s shirt and pressed down on the wound. Vince managed to hold a cry of pain but couldn’t help wincing. Nikki smiled, amused, inspected his bloody fingers and licked them, tasting the blood.

“I think he can make it through the night without stitching,” he turned to Tommy, “can he?”

“Are you serious?” Tommy frowned. Both cast quick glances at the door. “But Mick said…”

“Well, yeah, but Mick is a busy man,” Nikki's fingers grazed over Vince's cheek, leaving faint red traces. He sounded nonchalant, maybe even too nonchalant. “And you?” He turned to Vince. “D’ya want a filthy demon to do you, hm, a favor?”

Vince spat him in the face. The next moment his world went white, pain spiked through his cheek like it was ripped open. It, in fact, was, with a powerful slap of a demonic hand with claws out, leaving three deep, burning scratches across his cheek.

“You don’t,” the demon concluded with a smug grin. “Good night then, blondie. Enjoy your stay.”

Nikki got up and strolled towards the door. Tommy followed him, though his eyes lingered on Vince for a little too long.

Then the door closed, and Vince was left alone in the deafening silence where nothing could drown out his miserable thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: self-harm tendencies, forced alcohol consumption (idk really how else to tag this), non-con attempt, blood, needles mention

Vince stared at the cracked ceiling.

The ceiling stared back, its cracks and spots like wrinkles and blemishes on an old face. Some more staring, and Vince would probably start seeing eyes.

His home – former home – was supposed to be somewhere above the ceiling. Somewhere up in the sky. No one knew for sure where it was, and now that Vince thought about it, he never knew where exactly it was located as well. It was just there, in him and far from him at the same time, but always at the arm’s length, always there when Vince needed it.

No. No, it _wasn’t_. For him, it _had been_ there. It remained there still, yet out of Vince’s reach. Its calming, encouraging presence, constantly in the back of his mind before, was no longer there. It got lost among all those new thoughts and feelings, all products of his vessel’s weird, flawed human nature, but now also strangely personal to him too. In search of that presence, Vince delved deep into his mind, where he had never been before, and didn’t find anything.

Or rather, he did. Something he had never seen before; something so foreign and at the same time so _his_.

Vince yanked himself back to the reality, farther from those _somethings_. But having once seen them, he couldn’t pretend they weren’t there anymore.

So he decided to stare at the ceiling and focus on the pain in his shoulder. Pain was easy to understand; safe, in a way. Pain was punishing, and punishment was freeing. It was something Jesus had gone through. Maybe Vince was the next Jesus, and his cross was this blood-soaked bed, and his nails were humiliation and manhandling by those demons.

_An angel would never have such a thought,_ something whispered to him faintly, bringing him back to reality. _An angel, a true angel, would strive to become like Him, but never compare themselves to Him, because He is unreachable. _

Vince shivered as though a trickle of cold, pure fear ran down his spine. He pressed his face into the pillow, trying to chafe half-healed scratches on his face, to wring more pain out of them, to have something else to focus on.

It only made matters worse. His pain mixed with his desperation, fear and unanswered questions, turning into delirium so dark, so deep Vince drowned in it, the reality, like sunlight in the water, was blacked out. He didn’t hear the door creaking, letting in a night visitor, he didn’t see his slim frame looming over the bed, and only when a hand grasped his shoulder and shook him roughly, his mind reluctantly rose to the surface.

Vince’s heart was racing, his forehead was covered in cold sweat, but relief washed over him once he saw that cracked ceiling again. Even if that was Nikki, even if he had come to do what he promised to do to him, it was still better than down there, in the dark. Vince squinted, trying to discern the visitor's face in the faint light from the street. He wouldn’t be able to tell apart Nikki and Tommy, who resembled each other like brothers, if not for the hair: Tommy’s bushy and curly, Nikki’s straight and thick.

The shadow was gangly, and the hair framing his face was messy and wavy. Tommy.

"Asleep, blondie?" Tommy confirmed Vince’s guess a second later and knelt beside the bed. He had something in his hand, but Vince didn't catch a glimpse of it.

"You know we don't sleep," Vince replied indifferently, doing his best to keep the quiver away from his voice, and after a quick glance at Tommy, moved his gaze back to the ceiling.

"Well, I dunno. You could have passed out."

Vince didn't answer. He shouldn't have done it the first time as well, but the question was so normal, so _casual_ that for a second he forgot who was asking.

"Huh, too proud to talk to us, right?" Tommy said light-heartedly. "That's not for long." He reached up to Vince's handcuffed wrists and freed one of them, leaving his other wrist chained to the headboard.

"What are you doing?" he couldn’t help asking. Be that Nikki, he would have kept silent throughout the whole process, be that whatever had come to his perverted mind. But this wasn't Nikki.

“Fixing Nikki’s bullshit," Tommy replied shortly and reached to unbutton Vince's shirt.

That was when Vince, already baffled, couldn’t remain still. He pushed Tommy away with his free arm and rolled to the other side of the bed. He didn’t know how he had expected Tommy to react. Get angry, maybe. Drag him back. Hit him. Enchain his hand back to the headboard. There were so many options.

Tommy didn’t pick any of them. Instead, he burst into laughter. He did drag him back by his hurt arm then, making Vince hiss in pain. And kept laughing. The entire time.

"You should have seen your face. You looked so frightened,” the demon explained once his laughter subdued. Vince was pretty sure he still had fear written across his face, made worse by Tommy’s following words.

“Lie still and it won't hurt as much," he promised, unbuttoning the last button on his shirt and pulling it down Vince’s torso. Seeing Vince’s eyes widen, he chuckled. "What, are you really that afraid of losing your virginity? It's not even a real thing. Just a social construct."

With increasing desperation Vince watched as Tommy climbed onto the bed and straddled his torso, pinning his injured arm to the mattress. For a couple of seconds he enjoyed the mix of fear and disgust on Vince’s face before finally announcing: "Relax. I ain't gonna fuck you. Right now, at least. Maybe later, after I'm finished with that," he poked Vince's shoulder right above the cut.

Vince blinked in confusion, completely taken aback. He had already been mentally preparing for humiliation and pain, the only things he expected from those demons. _Had _expected.

“Why would you do that?”

Tommy ignored his question. “Jeez,” he grinned at the sight of Vince wincing from hearing this word so distorted, “you’ve got a lot of blood in here.” He bent forward to take a closer look at the cut. His long fluffy hair tickled Vince’s nose and got covered in blood that was all over his shoulder. “Do you even have any left?”

“Does it matter?” Vince murmured, getting increasingly uncomfortable under Tommy’s fixed, serious stare that absolutely didn’t match his nonchalant tone.

“It fucking does!” Tommy flared up, making Vince flinch. He didn’t expect him to sound so serious; he didn’t expect him to even be capable of acting that way. “You think, immortality and shit, yeah? Threw myself off a building, woke up unharmed, now I can do whatever the fuck I want? Well, buddy, it ain’t gonna work like that anymore. Bodies are fragile. They break. And you won’t get a new one any time soon, if ever. You gotta be careful with yours from now on.”

“But can’t demons possess human bodies?”

“Yeah, they can. Those like Mick. I ain’t Mick, you ain’t Mick, and it’s gonna take us half a millennium at best to even try to compare ourselves to Mick. Didn’t you feel it? He’s… he’s…” Tommy trailed off. “Well, you get it.”

Vince nodded automatically, remembering the shudder that ran down his spine when he first looked in those clear blue eyes. He did get it.

“Well, back to business,” after a second of silence Tommy dropped onto the bed the things he was holding in his hand. They turned out to be a needle, a reel of black thread and a bottle of something with a very distinct smell. “I am no doctor, so it’s probably gonna be painful and sloppy. No, it’s _definitely_ gonna be painful and sloppy. Sorry to spoil such a great vessel. Or not sorry.” He pinched Vince’s cheek, opened the bottle and took a gulp out of it.

“Here, have some.” Despite Vince’s frantic headshaking, Tommy pushed the bottle between his lips, and Vince, afraid of getting his teeth knocked out, gave in. Tommy upended the bottle, and acold, burning liquid went down Vince’s throat, choking him and sending him into a fit of coughing. Tommy watched him with such a smug grin, he was lucky to be sitting on Vince’s free hand.

“Whiskey,” he patted the bottle lovingly. “Another great invention of humankind, after sex and rock n’ roll. Or, rather, the reason for them.”

“Tastes like shit.” Vince spat out the remains of the drink, aiming at Tommy, but missing, and most of it ended up on his own chin. Tommy snickered and wiped it with his hand.

“That’s because it’s your first time drinkin’. You’ll get used to it.” Tommy spent good five minutes threading a needle and biting his lips in frustration when the thread didn’t want to go through the eye of the needle. Having finally done it through a great effort, he dipped the needle together with the thread into the remains of whiskey. “Also a good antiseptic.”

“Good what?”

Tommy looked at him in confusion for a second before smiling wide, realization on his face. “Damn, I forgot you’re fresh out of Heaven. Alcohol’s good not only for drinking but also for killing bacteria in your wounds so that the inflammation won’t spread to other parts of your body. If not treated, it can actually kill you.” Seeing Vince’s eyes widen, he burst into laughter. “Trashy, right? The cost for occupying a human vessel. They are a pain in the ass, so fragile and prone to illnesses. Even those occupied by us.” Tommy talked so quickly Vince couldn’t even get a word in edgeways. Great, just great, he thought grimly, now he would have to look after this sack of flesh as well. As though he didn’t have other problems in need of an urgent solution.

Tommy raised the needle up to his level, observed it critically and decided it was ready to use.

“Alright, now lie still. It’s gonna hurt anyway but even more, if you twitch.”

“Very reassuring,” Vince muttered, closing his eyes and resting his head against the pillow. At the mere thought of receiving more pain his body tensed up, and Vince knew that this way it was going to hurt even more. Still, he couldn’t relax.

Instead, he heard a chuckle. “Didn’t know anyone from up there could have a sense of humor.”

Then finally came the pain. Vince winced and breathed shallowly, trying not to make a sound, not to show how he was hurting,

Tommy was definitely no good at sewing. The skin on Vince’s shoulder was already bloody and swollen, and the whole process felt like sticking needles right into the wound. Vince hissed and screwed up his eyes so hard he could see colorful circles, breathing shallowly and biting his lips until they bled. It helped, though. He managed to hold back tears, for now, he concentrated on the lump in his throat so strongly the pain from the needle shifted to the back of his mind, still there, but definitely not as acute as before. _Don’t cry, don’t cry_, a voice in his hand kept repeating, with dull, unhuman intonations. _Don’t lose your composure_, it kept saying, and it sounded reasonable.

Vince pressed his lips together tightly, not letting out a single sob, a single tear. He wasn’t going to show Tommy how bad it was hurting, because hurting meant weakness, and weakness meant humiliation.

But God, was it hard.

The cut was narrow but deep, going through almost his entire shoulder. His blood on the needle was making it harder for Tommy to hold it, and it constantly slipped out of his fingers, sometimes while it was still in Vince’s skin. Vince never said a word, just bit down onto his lower lip, again and again, his saliva metallic-flavored.

“So quiet,” Tommy murmured upon pulling out the needle from Vince’s flesh once again. His hand slipped, and the needle sank even deeper in the wound. Vince held down a groan. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt, I know it does. Stop that pretense, for fuck’s sake.”

“What do you want me to do, cry? Throw a fit?” With effort, he almost – _almost_ – managed to sound calm, but the slight quivering of his voice had managed to leak through his already battered facade.

“No, but there’s absolutely no point in holding your emotions in some situations. For example, when you get a wound sewed up with no painkillers whatsoever,” Tommy huffed. “Listen, I couldn’t care less, play a tough one if you want. Just remember that’s not gonna work with Nikki.”

“What do you mean?” Something inside Vince’s chest froze in fear. He knew already what Tommy meant, but there was still a little bit of _maybe I am wrong-_

“I meant exactly what I said,” Tommy cut off, in a matter of seconds shifting from carelessness to seriousness and completely demolishing Vince’s last bit of hope. He poked Vince’s chest with so much force his finger left a red trace on the skin. “You know he will come here because he always keeps his promises, and when he does come, your stubbornness will only make it worse for you. He wants to get a certain reaction out of you, and if he doesn’t, he will do literally anything, and I mean _anything_, to get it. You will get out of it with less damage if you just play along.”

During Tommy’s short but convincing speech the silence of the room felt choking. A cold lump in Vince’s stomach grew twice as huge. If even a demon, an evil and wicked creature, tried to warn him about another demon - it was especially serious.

But Vince’s anger, flaring up in his chest, bright, fast and burning, drowned out this very reasonable thought. Somewhere in the back of his mind Vince was surprised at how easy it had risen, powerful and all-consuming.

“If he thinks he can make me do whatever he wants, he is fucking wrong,” Vince hissed. “Did he send you to prepare the ground? To scare me into obedience? Well, tell him he’s gotta put in a real effort to get what he wants!”

His last word was muffled by Tommy’s hand on his mouth.

“Be quiet, idiot!” he whispered, glancing cautiously onto the door. Vince tried to bite him in protest, but Tommy didn’t even let him open his mouth. “You’re gonna wake everyone up!”

Vince tried to shake his hand off, but it stayed firmly on his mouth, pressing his head deep into the pillow. He struggled some more, but his every movement was sending a jab of pain through his shoulder where the needle was still staying. The stitch loosened, and Vince could feel hot drops of blood oozing from the cut.

So after a few more weak jerks, he surrendered, breathing heavily, vision blurred with tears that he tried so hard to hold back and failed.

“Fucking dumbass,” Tommy sighed, examining the stitch. “Ruined all the hard work. I can finish it, but it won’t be half as effective.”

_Just do the thing and piss off_, Vince wanted to say. He felt so exhausted as though he had run a mile.

“Finish,” he managed to get out. Tommy pulled at the thread, tightening the stitch and eliciting a curse out of Vince, and resumed his work.

Now that Nikki’s name came up in the conversation, Vince’s mind shifted onto him. He was stabbed too, and even deeper than Vince, but he couldn’t remember it doing him any actual harm. When they had arrived to this apartment, his bleeding had already stopped. Vince’s bleeding, on the other hand, had been going on for the rest of the day and half a night. _What the?.._

“Nikki is a powerful demon,” Tommy had to explain hesitantly when Vince demanded the answer. “Not as powerful as Mick, of course, but definitely not of the weaker kind. He’s been around for a good century longer than me. Still ain’t got no brains, though,” he added with unexpected fondness.

“And you?” Vince asked quickly and regretted it at the very same moment. Tommy’s face, so lively and dynamic before, as though turned into a mask.

“What me?” he said, incomprehension in his voice too perfect to be genuine.

“How long have _you_ been around?”

“How curious you are,” Tommy’s lips were still curved into a smile, but his eyes shifted from cheerful hazel to burnt wood. “Curiosity killed the cat, y’know.”

“What?” Vince blinked in confusion. What did this have to do with a cat? “Really? How?”

Tommy looked at him blankly for a second and then burst into laughter. This time it was sincere.

“Christ, I always forget you don’t know shit about Earth,” he said once he’d calmed down. “You’re gonna be so much fun. That’s just a local saying. Means that you have to pay a price for information. Especially that personal.” He leaned forward, so close to Vince their noses almost touched, looming over him. Vince later would swear he could smell burning wood for a second. “Are you ready to pay the price, blondie?”

“No,” Vince said maybe too quickly, already cursing his curiosity. “Forget it.” Tommy’s pupils were so dilated they took up almost his entire irises. His gaze was making Vince uneasy, and his heart was beating so fast he was sure Tommy could hear it too. When Vince tried to turn his head to avoid looking at those eyes anymore, Tommy grabbed his chin with his fingers, forcing him to stay still. _Just like Nikki_, Vince realized, a cold shiver running down his spine. _Friendlier on the outside, but inside just as dark. _

“I’m already done with this,” Tommy said, observing the stitch critically, and bit the rest of the thread off. “And I think I deserve an award.”

That was the last straw.

“That’s what you came for in the first place, right? Could have just gone for it right then and not play a good one,” Vince spit out. He had enough of being scared; now all his fear turned into anger, bitter, resentful anger. _Just_ when he started to lose caution, to relax a little, to dampen his defense and believe not all demons were alike… Fucking asshole. Assholes, all of them. Shouldn’t have answered him the first time.

“Well, mostly,” Tommy grinned, putting away the needle and the reel and reaching for the bottle. “Wanna?”

“Fuck off.”

“All right, more for me,” Tommy downed the rest in one huge gulp. “Imagine how Nikki’s gonna be pissed when he learns he’s not the first,” he chuckled, baring his teeth in a wide smile, a smile that wilted slightly when he met Vince’s gaze. A little more of that, Vince thought with grim satisfaction, and he would learn to burn holes in human skin with his eyes.

Tommy leaned to the side of the bed to put the bottle under the bed and had to let go of Vince’s hand. When he sat up, Vince’s fist collided with his cheekbone. Tommy gasped and flinched back, and Vince couldn’t hold back a sneer.

The injured hand wasn’t capable of anything serious, though. It took Tommy mere few seconds to get over the punch and straighten up. A violent wave of pain swept through Vince’s entire arm, making him hiss in pain and drop his hand weakly onto the bed. He was defenseless - _again_.

Vince closed his eyes, expecting a response. A punch or, at the very least, a slap on the face. That was what Nikki would do. That was what Vince himself, if they swapped bodies, would do.

Tommy started laughing.

“Oh wow, you aggressive little shit! Did you just go round punching other angels in Heaven like that? Was that why they kicked you out?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Vince reminded coldly, which launched Tommy into another fit of laughter so strong he almost fell off the bed.

“No, you’re totally a lot of fun,” Tommy claimed once he calmed down enough to be able to speak. “Or maybe you’re trying to get me distracted till everyone wakes up? Huh, blondie, this ain’t gonna work. I mean, yeah, talking to you all night would be pretty cool, but, y’know, a man’s got his needs, and Nikki’s been pretty moody lately.”

Vince was hardly surprised. To believe that the demons who were constantly talking about _it_ hadn’t done _it_ with each other before was to be an utter and complete idiot.

What was the name for it besides hooking-up, by the way?

Resigned, Vince watched as Tommy settled between his thighs, unzipped his pants and pulled them down to his knees. Although the thin fabric hardly provided any protection, its absence brought a feeling of vulnerability so strong Vince couldn’t handle looking at Tommy and stared at the door instead.

“C’mon, that’s only scary until you get down to it,” Tommy said almost sheepishly. “Humans wouldn’t obsess over sex so much if it wasn’t enjoyable.”

I’m no human, Vince wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat.

Tommy’s hands roamed around his hips and legs, then disappeared. Vince heard the zipper getting undone.

And then – footsteps behind the door.

Tommy jumped up, his eyes darting at the door, and Vince caught a glimpse of pure terror on his face before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. The very next moment the door opened, and Mick stepped inside.

“Aha,” he said only, quickly looking over Vince, his sloppily stitched shoulder, pants crumpled at the knees, the empty whiskey bottle sticking out from under the bed. Vince’s cheeks grew strangely hot, and he hopelessly reached out to pull up his pants – hopelessly, because they were out of his reach, but remaining _like this, _so open and defenseless under Mick’s piercing gaze, was somehow way worse.

When Mick stepped towards the bed, Vince’s hand dropped, and the urge to close his eyes, to escape this whole situation in the only way available was so strong he later wondered what had kept them open after all. Stubbornness, maybe. Or spite. Or both.

Mick stretched out his hand and hitched up Vince’s pants until he could freely reach them. Then he turned around and left the room. Physically, because contempt – or, far worse, pity, - in his icy gaze haunted Vince for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I won't be able to post the next chapter soon because I have my midterms :( sorry for taking so long to update, I try my best


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: GRAPHIC NON-CON, violence, self-harm tendencies, blood, biting, restraints.

The rest of the night Vince spent in hazy slumber, the one that at first feels like a heavy, cozy blanket that grows heavier and heavier until it starts strangling. It might have been because of his blood loss, he figured later, since neither angels nor demons, no matter who he was at the moment, actually needed sleep. Tommy was probably right, though. This body, which didn’t let him destroy it at first, was now on the verge of collapsing. It needed more careful treatment.

And… Tommy. Vince couldn’t get his head around him. Hurting him, then coming in at night to fix him. Trying to help him get through an encounter with Nikki, then attempting to do the same Nikki wanted to do to him. There was no logic in his actions, no motivation. And he called him “a lot of fun”. There was no innate hate behind his words, the feeling so natural to both angels and demons, the feeling that kept them against each other. There was nothing fun in that. Tommy, however, managed to find it.

Vince was dragged back from his slumber in the early morning when the sky had only started to color. There was a sound, sharp, loud, _alien_ to Vince. He had never heard it; it was so hostile it sent a shiver down his spine. Vince was both curious and averse to seeing its source. Must have been one of those terrible inventions humans used to kill each other not so long ago. Vince had never seen them; he was kept up there snowed under all the paperwork. So many people to die meant so many souls needed handling.

The sound thundered along the streets unnervingly close to the house Vince was kept in before fading away in a few seconds, leaving an uncomfortable emptiness in the air.

Then the emptiness was broken by a scream, a scream in a very familiar voice. Nikki’s. And… angry.

Vince shuddered. He could only hope the anger hadn’t been caused by Tommy’s night affair. The entire conversation they had with Tommy was now running in his head, with no end and no beginning, and every time the word “Nikki” stood out in that mess, Vince could feel his own fear, almost physical at this point, pulsating in his stomach. It felt like a cold icky lump in his chest unfolding more and more, releasing more cold, liquid fear into his veins. It was irrational, of course, because what would Nikki do to him apart from hitting? How would he hurt him when Vince welcomed his pain, even longed for it?

Still, the lump was there, a constant, merciless reminder of Vince’s own weakness over something he didn’t even know about, of his _unworthiness_. He had to remind himself that he, after all, used to be God’s warrior once. He might not have been one anymore, but he surely wasn’t going to just let Hell claim him like that, without an effort. He would take everything Nikki would do to him like _He_ did. _He_ might have rejected him, but Vince wasn’t yet going to discard everything his life had been about before_ that_ happened.

Wait, _yet_?..

Vince waited, flinching at every sound from behind the door. He could hear worried voices in another room, voices that from whispering sometimes rose up to screaming, but even then it was hard to make out words. Occasionally he heard quick footsteps in the hall, but none of them stopped in front of his door.

The sun had gone up and was approaching its highest point in the sky, and still - nothing. Vince stared at it until he went temporarily blind, dull pain starting to throb behind his eyelids. The pain in his shoulder had decreased, turning from sharp strikes of pain throughout his whole upper body into a dull and totally bearable pulsation under the skin. The cut had closed over the night, and only a drop or two of blood oozed from it from time to time. The scratches from claws on Vince’s cheek had almost healed as well, leaving only red itchy traces. Vince dug his nails into one of them as hard as he could, but his nails were too short to actually hurt him, only leaving faint traces. He tried to tear the thread off and open the cut, but the thread turned out to be very strong.

Vince needed the pain and couldn’t get it.

Nikki came when the sun had already started to set, coloring the sky so brightly Vince couldn’t tear his gaze away from them. The Earth was ugly, ugly and cruel, but there were times when Vince remembered that it once was _His_ creation. Humans might have disfigured it beyond recognition, but the core, the idea behind the Earth remained unchanged.

Now, however, it didn’t seem good. No world that had given birth to such a creature as Nikki did.

Nikki closed the door quietly, approached the bed and bent down to Vince’s face. Vince pretended to be asleep when he entered the room, but he didn’t need eyes to sense him. The air as though grew colder with his presence. Or was that the trickle of fear down Vince’s spine that made his hands shaky?

Nikki’s hand, that stretched out to grab his hurt shoulder and shake it violently, also was cold.

“Wake up, blondie,” he whispered quietly, almost tenderly, and this hint of tenderness made Vince open his eyes in surprise and, maybe, _maybe_, a little bit of hope. It was taken from him that very moment. The eyes that met his gaze were not green – they were pitch-black.

“I see Tommy visited you last night,” Nikki continued, rubbing his thumb over the stitches. It stung under his touch. “What a dumbass, huh? Didn’t even use the chance.” Nikki’s other hand slid across Vince’s chest, fingertips barely touching the skin.

“He did,” Vince said, staring right between Nikki’s eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to look directly into those pits of darkness, but he’d be damned, and he meant that literally, if he showed his fear in front of Nikki, even slightly. He wasn’t afraid, he reminded himself. Nikki couldn’t hurt him more than he had already been hurt - when he fell.

“Oh, really? Glad to hear that,” Nikki grinned and sat down on the bed, his palm pressing lightly onto Vince’s chest, not deep enough to hurt, but enough to hold him in place. “And how did it go? Did you like it?”

“He was interrupted,” Vince murmured. It felt as though cold threads of fear were seeping from Nikki’s fingers into Vince’s chest, sticking together into an icy lump.

“By Mick, right?” the hand moved down onto his stomach, tickling his skin with the claws, half an inch away from pain. Vince remembered how deep those claws could dig in. “Such a pity. In this house, I always have to do everything myself.”

Vince didn’t answer. Next moment, the claws dug into his skin, drawing a sharp inhale out of him.

“You know no one will come and save you now,” Nikki smiled sweetly.

“All bark and no bite,” Vince croaked, his mouth suddenly going dry.

Nikki blinked, taken aback for a moment. Only a moment, though.

“Kinky,” he said then and leaned towards him in a swift movement, obscuring his vision by a mass of black hair with an artificial, somewhat bitter smell. Teeth closed on his neck and bit through the skin, drawing blood and shooting strikes of pain down his spine.

Here was the pain that Vince craved so much. He closed his eyes and immersed himself in it. He waited with bated breath for the familiar rush of relief to wash away the discomfort of pain, to clear his head and to bring his emotions under control.

Only, it didn’t come. It was just simple pain now. Humiliating. Undeserved. Senseless. Pain he had to endure for a demon’s enjoyment. Not for the sins of humankind. Not even for his own sins.

For Nikki’s hard-on.

Vince’s hand grabbed a fistful of Nikki’s hair and pulled his head back, forcing him to unclench his teeth. It was a short victory: he made Nikki yelp in pain, but then he grasped Vince’s wrist, digging his claws into it so deeply Vince’s fingers weakened their grasp. He had to release Nikki’s hair and jerk his hand back, unsuccessfully trying to break free from the grip.

“Well, you’re fucking making me,” Nikki hissed, reaching for Vince’s handcuffed hand. Next moment cold metal wrapped around his hurt wrist - Vince had no idea how the demon managed to do that without a key - chaining it to the bedhead like the other wrist. _Again._

Nikki straddled him, disheveled. “Usually I don’t like my toys restrained,” he said through heavy breathing. “But having you like this is kinda hot. What are you gonna do now, angel?”

Vince kicked him on the back as far as his left knee, the only unrestrained part of his body, could reach. He aimed at the head, but only reached the shoulder, making Nikki fall forward and almost sprawl on top of him. Nikki rolled to the side and with his elbow stopped another kick, gripping Vince’s leg once it reached his arm and clutching onto it. He then pinned it to the mattress with both his knees and scrambled to get his belt out of the belt loops. Vince wriggled helplessly under him, trying to push him off, but to no avail. The belt wrapped around his ankle and tied it tightly to the bedpost.

Once it was done and Vince couldn’t move at all, Nikki sighed with relief and leaned back, observing his work with a satisfied smile. Vince tried to jerk his legs and arms before realizing he probably looked like a dying animal in a trap, the most undignified situation he could imagine, so he lay still – he would not let Nikki enjoy seeing him struggling like that. Only his eyes were burning holes in Nikki’s face.

“As I said,” Nikki continued like nothing had happened, “I don’t usually like my toys tied up. But you’re truly something else. So… fierce. And so _helpless_ at the same time.” He smiled, and Vince was sure he caught a moment of unexpected fondness before the smile turned into a sneer.

Nikki stretched out his hand and caressed Vince’s cheek, the one with the scars – now barely visible lines – from his claws. “I like your spirit, y’know.”

If not for Nikki’s quick reaction, Vince would have bitten his fingers off.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!” the demon grinned, but the next moment his smile wilted as fast as it appeared. “Now back to business. I’ve had enough of your stubbornness already.”

“If you’re so pissed with me, why don’t you leave me alone then?” Vince spat out.

“In your wildest dreams, honey.”

Nikki got on top of him again and leaned forward to the bite on his neck. The blood oozed from it slowly but steadily, and a few drops had already stained the sheets. Not that it made a big difference: the sheets were already dark red and black, and smelled no better than they looked.

Nikki licked the blood off, his tongue warm and wet on his skin. Vince winced in disgust.

“You taste _heavenly_,” he carefully tucked a stray lock of Vince’s hair behind his ear and leaned towards it, so close Vince could feel his breath on the skin. “And I mean that literally. You still have a lot of heaven in you.”

_Still_. Vince turned away from Nikki, not wanting to see the complacent expression on his face. But even that he wasn’t allowed to do.

“Squeamish, huh?” Nikki’s fingers grasped Vince’s chin and forcefully turned his head back to face him. He smiled, but Vince would rather he didn’t. “That won’t do, angel. You’re gonna look at me the entire time. Get me? Look up there, right in my eyes. And if you don’t,” he paused for effect, his grip on Vince’s chin tightened, “it’ll hurt.”

Pain, more pain. Wasn’t Vince craving it?

“Good,” he said indifferently, staring right at the ceiling above Nikki’s shoulder.

For a second Nikki looked at him blankly. Then Vince’s guts were torn out of his stomach, dragged out alive and wrapped around the bedpost.

Or rather, he felt like they did. This terrible, unbearable pain in his stomach couldn’t be a result of anything less than that. Vince screamed, but even his voice was taken from him, and his mouth only drew in short, panicky gasps. Vince cried, but tears weren’t coming, as though afraid of blurring Nikki’s face in front of him, his calm gaze and satisfied grin. Edges of Vince’s vision started going black, Nikki’s face – fading away. Vince’s throat was raspy from all the screaming, his breath broken and shallow. The demon must have stuck a hand into his stomach and tear out his organs one by one, so slowly, so cruelly-

It was over. Oh Lord, it was over. Over. Must be _His_ help. Of course, _He_ hadn’t forgotten about him, or _He_ would let him pass out from the pain. Of course, Vince still mattered to _Him_. After all, he was _His_ son – a wayward one, but a son nevertheless.

The world around Nikki’s face gained clarity, and Vince could again feel the warm metal of his bracelets, now bloody from all the jerking he unconsciously did, and the rugged belt against his skin. He couldn’t help but glance down at his stomach, to see if his guts were still there. The skin was dirty and covered in dry blood, but otherwise perfectly unharmed.

“Still feel like it’ll be good for you, wannabe martyr?” Nikki grinned. “Or will you be a good boy and do what I say?”

The urge to spit him in the face was almost irresistible. Almost, because the pain, terror, and desperation Nikki had made him feel were still fresh in his mind.

The grasp on Vince’s chin tightened again, claws digging into his skin.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” Nikki notified coldly.

“I’ll…” humiliation got the right words stuck in his throat. It took Vince an immense effort to push them out. “I’ll – I’ll do what you say.”

“That’s a good boy.” Nikki let go of his chin and wiped a drop of sweat off Vince’s forehead. “Alright, now let’s _finally_ get down to business. I swear, if you pull one more trick, I’ll just choke you, and not in a romantic way.” _Wait, there was a romantic way of cho-_

Nikki unzipped Vince’s pants and pulled them down together with his underwear, and as Vince felt goosebumps on his naked skin, every thought he had in mind drowned in a sudden wave of pure, primal fear. It was hard to believe Nikki wouldn’t do what he promised, but hope, oh, that bitch had almost made Vince believe that it was just bluff, despite Nikki looking like the last person to do it. But now it was actually happening, with Nikki settled between his legs, undressing him, all so terribly real, that every little drop of hope Vince had had before evaporated, and instead of a steady flow of emotions in his mind, there was now a desert, blinding rays of fear turning every positive emotion into sand, and the hot, dry wind of desperation forming dunes out of it.

Nikki’s voice brought Vince’s mind back to the real world. “Damn, that won’t do,” the demon frowned, and Vince’s stomach sank. What else did he want from him? Wasn’t what he had already done enough?

But Nikki only poked at the belt around Vince’s leg with annoyance. Apparently, it prevented him from taking the pants off completely. They just bunched under Vince’s knees, not letting Nikki spread his legs wide enough.

“Should have undressed you first,” Nikki muttered, looking thoughtfully at the pants, then raised his hand, with those long, pointy claws, and then there was a sound of fabric tearing. “I hope you weren’t attached to them or anything," Nikki patted Vince’s bare leg and with the last pat left his hand on his thigh.

It slowly slid up and settled on his hip, with a finger carefully circling the hipbone. Then it moved onto his stomach, as though Nikki could feel where Vince’s terror was located. He probably did. No, he _definitely_ did.

Something switched in Vince’s head. Wasn’t it enough that Nikki enjoyed his helplessness and humiliation? Did he want to enjoy his fear too? Completely break him, turn into a wrecked mess?

Those thoughts felt alien to him, like they had been sent to his brain from the outside. But this was only for a moment – as they ran like poison through Vince’s veins, they became so personal, so incredibly _his_, that no other person in the world could feel exactly the same.

The very next moment from a poison they became a drug. Vince let it into his thoughts. Embraced it.

_Well, he better make a fucking effort then, _the drug whispered in a familiar tone.

“You’re so tense,” Nikki said sweetly. His voice felt like a bitter pill in a sugary coating. “That won’t do.”

“What the fuck else do you want from me?” Vince threw his head back onto the pillow, looking at Nikki with exhaustion. He wanted all of it to be over already, but he knew Nikki wouldn’t just let him out like that. Still, one could dream. “Just do the thing already.”

“We’re not in a hurry,” Nikki reminded softly, but his hand on Vince’s stomach tensed up, ready to let out claws at any second. “Do you remember what I told you at the bar?”

“You talked a lot of bullshit,” Vince spat out.

“Oh, for sure,” Nikki snorted. “But there was a moment of truth there. It’s going to take as much as I need, and in the end, you’ll be begging for more. Remember?”

“You fucking wish.”

“Wanna make a bet?” Nikki offered, flashing a toothy smile. “That you’ll like it, little slut that you are.”

Vince spat at him. Most of the spit was left on his own chin, but some reached the aim.

Nikki wiped it off of his face, his grin growing wider, and oh God, did he have _that many_ teeth before?

He pushed Vince’s legs wider, jerked one up by the knee, looking at what no one had ever looked before. Even Vince hadn’t, too busy coming up with various suicide scenarios in his time in the vessel. Vince wasn’t sure what the purpose of all those body parts he had down there was – there surely was some, but he hadn’t got to know. Still, he felt blood rushing to his cheeks against his will. Some kind of instinctive reaction? The feeble remains of the vessel’s own consciousness?

He didn’t get to finish this train of thought, though.

“You know,” Nikki kept smiling, that fake, terrifying smile of his, with too many teeth, “usually there’s supposed to be some kind of lubrication there. To, y’know, relieve the friction. But, unfortunately, we don’t have any.” He pushed Vince’s leg up onto his shoulder, giving himself better access to his lower parts, raised his hand to his face, so Vince could see it, and curled two of his fingers, and Vince slowly started to realize what he wanted to do with-

Then his flesh was being ripped open, Nikki’s finger digging deep into it with the claw out.

Vince dropped his head back onto the pillow, clutching at the handcuffs with so much desperate power he felt the skin on his wrists bruise, scratching the bedhead frantically and trying so, _so_ hard not to scream - all in vain. It was muffled whimpering at first, then, when the second finger joined in, screaming. The world went bleak and blurry with tears, blackened at the edges of Vince’s vision.

Then Nikki pulled his fingers out, squeezing a hoarse gasp – all Vince could get out at the moment – out of him. Through tears, Vince could only see something red where Nikki’s hand was supposed to be.

“So we’ll replace it with natural lubrication,” Nikki finished as if nothing happened. The sound of his voice barely managed to get through the buzz in Vince’s ears, whether it began from his own screams or from how hard he tried to hold them.

“Don’t wanna talk back anymore, angel?” Nikki bent down to Vince’s face and wiped a tear off his cheek. “Funny how just a little bit of pain made you change your mind so quickly."

The poison, no, the _drug_, drowned out by pain before, fluttered weakly in his chest and wilted. Vince looked dumbly at Nikki and through Nikki, not seeing his face inches away from his own.

For that, he got a powerful slap to the face – this time without claws.

“You’ll space out when I allow you to,” Nikki reminded him sternly. Vince had to focus on him and blink to show he heard him. A simple nod seemed too much of an effort.

“Let’s move on then.” Nikki returned to his place between Vince’s legs, now with a growing red spot on the sheets between them. Vince heard him unzipping his pants.

_No one will come this time, _he thought.

No one did.

It was bigger than fingers but at least didn’t have claws on it. It went easily through torn flesh, making Vince writhe and whimper with every inch deeper. Nikki’s hand lay heavily on his chest, pressing him down to the mattress, not letting him resist in any way. Not that Vince even tried.

“Say goodbye to your virginity,” Nikki told him once he was fully inside, his hands on Vince’s hips, one holding onto them firmly, the other rubbing his thigh - back and forth, back and forth. “A little too much blood than there usually is, but you’ll survive. Most likely.”

_Most likely?_

Vince’s stomach twitched. Maybe it was just another one of Nikki’s threats, he tried to calm himself. Just another threat with no ground behind it, said solely for the sake of it. He lifted his head up to check Nikki’s face, but then caught a glimpse of his eyes and dropped it back, his arms weakening. While Nikki’s face was calm, his body relaxed, his movements well-calculated, his eyes were where his real emotions could be seen through.

He didn’t lie - he couldn’t guarantee for Vince to survive this. His eyes were that not of a sentient being, but a reflection of a single emotion so intense as though it took human form. It was hunger. Hunger for pain.

For Vince’s pain.

Nikki thrust in for the first time, and Vince exhaled a soft, almost unrecognizable “damn”. Nikki’s dick felt burning hot against his flesh, and Vince’s blood was boiling, and his entire lower part of the body was on fire. Not a good kind of fire - the kind of fire that burned witches. Just like it burned sins out of their bodies, it was burning something out of Vince’s.

Nikki’s lips curled into a satisfied smile, and he thrust again, and again, and again. Vince grit his teeth and bit his lips till they bled and swallowed his own screams till his throat ached. He wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t give Nikki that pleasure.

When Nikki changed his position and hovered over him, placing a hand at the side of his head, Vince instinctively turned his head to the side - only to be gripped by the chin and turned back. Nikki kept thrusting in, but more for the sake of keeping up the rhythm.

“You’re so quiet,” Nikki remarked idly, his other hand moving slowly, _too slowly_ from Vince’s hip to the stomach and then the chest. “Doesn’t it hurt anymore?”

Vince didn’t answer. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, his tongue sat swollen and dry in his mouth.

He should have learned by then that Nikki didn’t like being ignored. A hand wrapped around his throat, and Vince suddenly realized this was how he was going to die. He didn’t pay much attention to the way his nose inhaled and exhaled air before, it came so naturally to his vessel… now it was gone, taken from him. Vince gasped, trying to break free out of the grasp, but was immediately pressed back onto the pillow by the relentless hand on his neck. Panic washed over him, panic so intense he hadn’t felt even when he stood in front of a heavy truck, flew off a building, fell into a delirium of drug overdose. He had something there with him then – confidence, security even. Back then he was invulnerable, indestructible, bulletproof; he just needed to show the extremes he was ready to go for to be forgiven.

Now there was no security, no connection, no feeling of protection. He was alone, and nobody was going to save him. The hand on his throat cut off his air. He needed to breathe to live, and he couldn’t, and he was going to die, Vince realized as the edges of his vision started to blacken.

Then the grip on his throat loosened.

“Scary, right?” Nikki whispered in his ear, tickling his face with his hair. “Vessels are so fragile. Squeeze their throat for three minutes – and they’re gone. And you’re gone. No vessel - no you.”

“Don’t,” Vince managed to get out. His hurt throat distorted his voice, turning it into barely understandable croaking.

“Why not?” Nikki put his hand on his throat again, and Vince tensed up, but Nikki’s hand only stroked the skin where his fingers were digging in merely a minute ago. “Don’t you wanna die a martyr? Go back to Heaven?”

“I can’t,” pain accompanied every sound coming out of Vince’s mouth. _And you know that_ was left unsaid, hanging in the air, too long a phrase for him to handle.

“Fallen angels who haven’t finished transformation belong to neither Hell nor Heaven.” Nikki informed him matter-of-factly. “Do you know what happens to them when they die?”

“No,” Vince moved his lips silently.

“They stay here, on Earth,” Nikki said casually. “With no vessel, nowhere to go. Restless spirits without a purpose, full with grief over what they had lost. Nobody knows them, nobody needs them, and the only recognition they get are horror stories.”

_Why are you telling me this?_ Vince wanted to say. Only a barely audible “why?” came out.

“Just to be sure you know what lies ahead if you decide to end your miserable existence,” Nikki smiled, but only with his lips. His eyes were devoid of emotion, fixed on Vince, examining him, watching his reaction. “Do you prefer that, angel?”

Three days ago the answer would have been obvious for him. He would have gladly accepted immortal grief and desperation if it meant he wouldn’t fall even lower, wouldn’t turn into something he despised so much. He did something terrible and deserved to be punished for it, and if those grief and desperation were his punishment, then so be it.

He wasn’t the same as three days ago, though.

Vince knew that every moment of silence elongated the time the hand that now was stroking his skin leisurely was going to spend squeezing his throat.

He knew that and he kept silent. He didn’t know what he would choose anymore.

“Don’t wanna talk? Alright then.” Nikki’s grip hardened, and Vince was once again gasping and suffocating and clutching onto his restraints. Then Nikki entered him again, thrusting into him with merciless determination, and the world became a mess of flashes and blurs in front of his eyes. He heard ringing and gasping in his ears. Pain was the only constant thing in the background.

Nikki released him only when his jerking became weaker, more like a convulsion than a struggle. Vince inhaled hungrily, not noticing the pain going through his neck and chest with his every breath.

“Look at this. I made an angel cry,” Nikki wiped a tear off Vince’s cheek. Vince hadn’t even noticed he was crying. “What a monster I am, right?” He kept moving his hips at a steady pace, but the pain didn’t feel as unbearable anymore. Maybe Vince had gotten used to it already.

All he could do was a barely noticeable nod, but it was enough for Nikki.

“Yeah, of course- oh _fuck_, angel-“ Nikki moaned after an especially deep thrust which made Vince bite his lip, “-of course, I am.” He smiled crookedly, no usual complacency in his expression, and sped up, thrusting with such a violent passion even moans didn’t manage to form in Vince’s throat – only short, hiccupping gasps.

The bed was shaking, its headboard was bumping against the wall, and Vince tried to focus on that, on the simple, repetitive sound, but the hotness and pain in the lower part of his body and the sounds of skin slapping against skin were too loud, too strong to be drowned out. Barely minutes must have passed, but to Vince it felt like ages.

Maybe he died as a result of one of his suicide attempts and this was his Hell. His own, personal torture. Maybe no fallen angel really became a demon and was instead given their own punishment. Maybe there were no demons at all, and those were just other angels taking revenge for their own sufferings on the newer ones since they couldn’t reach those up in Heaven. Maybe Nikki was just the same as he was, just had gone further down the road. Maybe he…

Nikki let out a choked moan, his movements growing more and more erratic, his breaths shallow. Vince didn’t know all the whereabouts of hooking-up, but this surely meant something.

“Damn,” Nikki choked on his own breath. His hands, gripping Vince’s hips, were shaking, “damn, _angel-_“

Then he squeezed his eyes shut, his thrusts faltering, and something spilled inside of Vince, something hot and slick and _oh God_, was that really what he thought it was?

No, thank God, it was white. It mixed with blood on the sheets, and Nikki watched it with complacency on his face and exhaustion in his eyes. Vince dropped his head on the pillow. He wanted to pass out so badly. Just fall into darkness and come back when it’s all over, when Nikki’s gone.

Nikki, still breathing heavily, stretched out his hand and grabbed Vince’s torn pants, wiping off blood and sweat and the white thing.

“So how was that?” he asked casually, throwing the pants away and lying down on his side beside Vince. He propped Vince’s head up with his hand and examined him. His face was so close to Vince’s he could see his nostrils move when breathing. he looked away, at the ceiling, and this time he was practically sure he _could_ see eyes up there. Or were those just colorful circles in his eyes?

“Answer me,” Nikki poked him in the chest, but not very strongly, just to attract attention. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you didn’t? Or is oxygen deficiency causing memory loss for ya?”

Vince looked back at him for a little longer this time. Nikki’s expression wasn’t mocking or smug like it had been throughout the whole _thing_. And his eyes - his eyes started going back to green again, now the color of rotten leaves.

“You didn’t fulfill your promise,” Vince whispered hoarsely.

“What, about the pleasure?” Nikki raised his eyebrows. “But we didn’t make a bet, did we? Or do you consider spitting in the face an expression of agreement?”

A demon is always a demon, Vince thought wearily. It wouldn’t help him anyway: he would find a way to turn the bet against him. They always did. That’s why they were demons.

“Are you satisfied now?” Vince whispered almost soundlessly. His throat was sore and couldn’t get out anything louder than a whisper.

“Huh?” Nikki seemed to be taken aback, but only for a second. “I guess,” he said slowly, even thoughtfully. “I should be.”

_So all of that wasn’t enough for him_, Vince thought with growing desperation. What was he going to do next, flip him on his stomach and start again?

It must have been written all over his face because Nikki laughed and pinched his cheek.

“Calm down, angel. I’ve had enough for today. Poor little thing, I even feel sorry for you. Not your fault that you got into my hands after falling. Though I doubt there are demons out there who wouldn’t jump at the chance.”

“Sorry?” Vince tried to sound indignantly, but with his voice barely louder than a whisper it came out almost pitifully. “You _loved_ it!” he got the intonation right this time, but this three-word phrase sent him into a fit of coughing.

Nikki patiently waited for him to finish, then spoke quietly, in a tone too calm to be natural.

“You see, it’s not so much about you personally – though you did piss me off with that holy toothpick of yours – as about you being an angel. A fallen one, yes, but still an angel. And I’m a demon, blondie. And Heaven has done me a lot of wrong.”

“And you’re taking the revenge on me?”

“Not quite. That’s not a personal matter between people, or demons, or whatever. Honestly, any other angel with a fuckable vessel could be in your place. It’s more of a desecration, sweetheart. God loves his children, so what could hurt him more than hurting one of them?”

Vince expected to hear hate behind those words, but there was nothing. Nikki sounded like he was explaining something simple to a child. Like it was so obvious it didn’t even need an explanation. Like it was _normal_.

Maybe it really was, and Vince just couldn’t understand it yet?

“You used to be a child of God too,” he murmured, avoiding looking at Nikki and practically feeling his eyes staring intently at him, waiting for something.

“I rejected him,” Nikki finally said after a long pause. “Long ago.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been two months. I know. I'm sorry


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: self-harm, suicide attempt

Nikki patted Vince’s bare thigh and left with a mocking “sleep tight, angel”. He didn’t even bother to untie him, and Vince didn’t ask for it. He hadn’t fallen so low yet.

He regretted it very soon. Though the bleeding down there had stopped, the blood didn’t go anywhere and soon started to stink. Mixed with the smell of blood from the previous night, it made the room smell like a slaughterhouse. Vince had seen one of those a couple of centuries before, during his last visit on Earth. He wasn’t Vince yet back then. He was something else. Something completely different, but with a name and a purpose. Back then, any sight of violence was revolting to him. He had to turn away to avoid watching poor animals getting killed.

How he envied them now. It seemed so easy. Just one swing of an axe, and everything is over.

No sharp teeth biting into his neck. No long claws tearing apart his flesh. No rough hands ripping off his clothes, pinning him to the bed, leaving bruises on his skin.

Even animals had it easier than him. Even about animals _He_ cared more than about a child of his own, his flesh and blood, his own creation.

More and more of those dark, wrong, rebellious thoughts were flashing through Vince’s brain, flouncing about in his skull, intrusive, erratic, _convincing_. In the farthest corner of his mind Vince kept waiting for a stern voice in his head to say that it was all for a reason, and the reason was the crime he had committed, and all of this – all of this was his punishment.

But it never did, and the thoughts remained. They leaked deeper and deeper into Vince’s mind, to its most secluded corners, where even Vince never dared to look directly, afraid of seeing something he wasn’t supposed to see. They leaked there, drop by drop, word by word, and filled them to the brim, and mixed with what was already there.

And then came to light.

***

Just as the world started fading to black in front of Vince’s eyes, the door slammed open. Strong hands gripped his wrists and pulled them apart, releasing his throat. Vince tried to hold his breath, _he almost did it, after all, _but then a familiar, though way weaker, spike of electricity went down his spine, and for a moment his tormented vessel’s intrinsic desire to live overcame Vince’s desire to die. He inhaled hungrily, went into a fit of coughing, inhaled again, and again, and again, and the world started gaining colors back.

The first things to color were the eyes right in front of his. Strikingly, mesmerizingly blue eyes.

“Please, kill me,” Vince whispered hoarsely. The only demon who looked at him with a hint of sympathy was now right in front of him. Maybe he had enough kindness left in him to do Vince the last favor. He grabbed demon’s arms and pulled himself up, closer to Mick’s face, digging his fingers into tattooed skin with desperation strong enough to win over the fear. “Please, please, kill me.”

The demon cast a glance at him, his expression indifferent, and then pushed him back on the bed.

“No fucking way.”

Vince gasped shakily, feeling tears gathering up in his eyes. His last hope vanished. Nobody would let him do it, let alone help him. As much as the demons hated him, they needed him alive.

“Oh, come on, let’s do without all that,” Mick winced at the sight of tears. “Are you a teenage girl or what? Calm down.”

“I won’t,” Vince slurred through gritted teeth. The momentum, the state of turbulent determination was fading away, leaving behind only exhaustion and desperation.

“You will.” Mick frowned, and the air thickened again like it did with Nikki, and Vince suddenly remembered that this demon in front of him could destroy him in a movement of a finger. He must have already pissed him off so much. Vince bit his lip to not let out desperate sobs, stifled them in his chest for later, when he would be alone. “If we wanted you dead, we would simply not come for you.”

“I wish you had done that,” Vince said bitterly. Maybe talking back to such a powerful demon was a bad idea, but hadn’t he tried to kill himself a minute ago?

Mick didn’t answer this time, just _looked_ at Vince, and he wasn’t able to utter a word anymore. He tried, but his tongue felt sluggish and heavy, his lips were as though glued together, not willing to part. All Vince could do was breathe shallowly and look at Mick wide-eyed with fear.

“That’s better,” Mick said after a few seconds of silence, interrupted only by Vince’s heavy breathing. He looked over Vince, his gaze lingering on the blood-stained sheets between Vince’s legs and the wooden crowbar, the one Vince’s bracelets had been attached to, broken out of the bed’s headboard. Vince’s wrists were bloody and raw from where bracelets had been digging into his skin, but they only started to hurt now. “Is that Nikki’s visit that got you so agitated?”

Vince, still not being able to talk, shook his head. Nikki had started the process, of course. But the thoughts were Vince’s, not Nikki’s.

“It is, then,” the demon concluded and moved around the bed to get a better look. Feeling his stare right _there_ again drove blood to Vince’s cheeks for absolutely no reason. He had just realized how awful he must have looked, bloody and beaten, stripped of his last remains of dignity and self-control. No angel could get into a situation like this; _He_ just wouldn’t let it happen.

Vince was, apparently, no longer _His_ child.

“Nikki, unfortunately, isn’t the gentlest partner,” the demon said. “And he still hasn’t learned to clean up after himself.” Mick added calmly, the sort of unnatural calmness with not a single leaf on trees moving that comes right before the storm. “I should make him do it,” Mick cast another examining look at Vince, whose eyes widened with fear. “I really should.”

At the mere thought of Nikki touching him again something broke inside of Vince, spilling cold into his veins, spreading it throughout his whole body. But then Mick stretched out his hand and touched the chain. The metal ring around Vince’s ankle opened. While Vince stared at it in disbelief, the belt restraining his other ankle untied itself and slid to the floor. The bracelets opened with a click a second later.

“Next time.” Mick added. Relief washed over Vince. “Now get up.”

Easier said than done. Vince rolled on the side, trying to lean on his arms to sit up, but all his strength seemed to have left him, and his shaky arms were too weak to lift his body. Mick grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him up on his feet, nodding in response to Vince’s silent “thanks”.

Then Vince took one step and fell on his knees. His legs, having spent more than a day in the same position, couldn’t hold him. The abrupt movement sent spikes of pain throughout the lower part of his body, hurting in all the wrong places, places where it wasn’t supposed to hurt; a drop of blood slid down his inner thigh. Vince thought being hit by a truck should have hurt worse. It did, but only for a second. Here – here Vince had to go through it fully conscious and painfully aware of _how_ it happened.

“I will not carry you,” Mick warned, but reached out to help Vince get up. Vince gripped his hand so hard he almost pulled Mick down onto the floor with him.

“Careful!” Mick hissed, pushing away Vince’s hand and visibly wincing from pain. “I said I’m not carrying you, fucking get up yourself!” His hand rubbed the base of his neck.

Scared of making another mistake, Vince no longer tried to hold onto Mick, leaning onto the wall instead. His every step was followed by a pang of pain between his legs, but he never made a sound and only gritted his teeth. He wasn’t weak. He could handle it. He _would_ handle it, purely out of spite towards Nikki.

His vision blurred by tears, Vince didn’t notice they had arrived at their destination. Only when Mick opened the door in front of him and carefully pulled him inside, Vince managed to concentrate on reality.

He was in a bathroom. Not a very huge one and definitely not clean; but it had a toilet on which Vince could sit and the bath where he could wash off the blood which had already dried up and formed a crust on his skin. Vince limped heavily to the toilet and plopped onto the toilet lid.

“No-no, not here. Get right in the bath.” Mick pointed at it and turned on water. Thank god, Vince thought, and it took him a couple of seconds to realise he wasn’t thinking of _Him_ as reverently as he did before.

Vince clumsily climbed into the bath and sank onto the bottom. He looked at the water filling the bath and on red drops diluting in it with apathy. Hot water burned his skin at first, but once he got used to it, it became almost comforting, like a blanket or a hug of a friend.

“I’m going to fetch some clean clothes for you,” Mick said soon after. “Don’t try to drown yourself, okay? I’ll be back too soon for you to actually drown. Just keep that in mind.”

Vince only nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the water that was slowly reddening. His self-destructive moment of excitation had faded, leaving him empty and exhausted. Even raising his gaze seemed too big of an effort.

Mick should have really returned quickly, because Vince didn’t even notice his absence. The demon held a pair of jeans and an oversized t-shirt with a weird image on it. Skulls or something. Very demon-like.

“I doubt Tommy’s or Nikki’s pants will fit, so I had to take one of mine. Don’t you dare ruin them, I’ll take them back once we get you some new clothes,” Mick warned. “And the tee is Nikki’s, it’s his fault you’ve got all your things torn and bloody.”

_Nikki’s?_

Vince caught Mick’s gaze and shook his head, not even afraid of it piercing him through now. He barely handled hearing this name, let alone wearing his clothes. He wouldn’t put it on for the love of God and everything holy.

“What?” Mick frowned, and something as though fell in Vince’s stomach, but he didn’t avert his gaze. “Come on. It’s just a t-shirt.”

_I will not_, Vince pronounced with his lips, _put it on_.

“You’re being ridiculous.” Mick rolled his eyes. “You wearing his t-shirt doesn’t change a thing. It’s just because Tommy is even taller than Nikki and I don’t have anything clean right now.”

_I will not_, Vince repeated, burning a hole in Mick’s skin with his eyes, _put it on_.

“And I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Mick said, annoyance on his face. Every second Vince spent looking right into his eyes he grew more and more nervous, and some part of him, the one that wanted to crawl away when they first met, insisted panicky, _don’t argue, just do what he says, he will get angry, he will punish you for your audacity-_

_Fuck off_, Vince told it and kept looking Mick right in the eyes, as the world around him was losing its colors, and only those strikingly-blue eyes, that unreadable face, were all that mattered now.

Mick sighed. Slowly, wearily.

“Alright,” he said. The tension in the air that their eye contact was producing weakened. Vince inhaled sharply, only now realizing he had been holding his breath the entire time. “Are you okay with Tommy’s tees or do you hold grudges against him as well?”

Vince shook his head.

“Alright then.” Mick disappeared so swiftly even the door didn’t creak and came back with another t-shirt with an even weirder pattern, this time with wings and some letters. Vince caught a glimpse of Mick’s eyes under his black hair, but couldn’t recognize an expression in them.

By that time yellowish water had filled the bath. Vince sank lower into it and closed his eyes, imagining himself being in _His_ arms, the dream that always used to bring him comfort and peace. But it didn’t work that time – instead of calm and reassurance he felt only resentment, resentment so strong he struggled with an intense desire to jump out of the water. A goddamn demon, an evil, low creature did more for him than _He_ did, and Mick didn’t even do that much.

“Hey, don’t sleep,” Mick’s voice was muffled, as though he was talking from another room, although Vince could see him standing next to the bath. “You can actually drown. Your body is now almost as fragile as that of a mortal.”

_Why?_ Vince pronounced silently.

“You have lost the Lord’s support,” Mick said _His_ name with softness, almost… fondness? “and haven’t yet come into your full power. You’re hanging between Heaven and Hell, and neither is ready to accept you so far.”

_Wait, so Heaven can take me back?_ Vince perked up.

“What?” Mick raised his eyebrows. Vince, feeling incredibly stupid for some reason, pointed up at the ceiling, then at himself, and raised his hands up, curling his fingers around an invisible hand in the air. Vince hadn’t realised how vital the ability to speak was to him before, even if it was just to throw curses at Nikki and Tommy. Now he was missing it intensely.

Mick looked at him with confusion for a second before understanding reflected on his face.

“You want Heaven to take you back?” he said, frowning. “You still want it?”

Vince glanced at Mick and then lowered his gaze, staring at the water instead. He wouldn’t have answered even if he could talk, even if the question hadn’t been asked by a powerful demon who expected a very obvious and clear answer.

“You still want it,” Mick concluded with a sigh. Vince couldn’t bring himself to disagree. “Bad.”

He was disappointed, Vince could distinguish it in his tone. And hearing that from Mick was scary. But Vince needed the answer.

“Well, not quite,” Mick said slowly almost a minute of silence. “No one who’s left Heaven can come back.

That was it. _No one who’s left Heaven can come back_. It rang in Vince’s head, and every other sound was muffled by Mick’s voice repeating the same line in his head. No one who’s let Heaven can come back. No one who’s let Heaven can come back. No one-

“But that’s not a one-way ticket down to Hell,” Mick continued, and his voice, low and clear, easily overlapped Vince’s whirl of voices in his head repeating the same phrase, so easily it would surprise Vince if he wasn’t overcome by emotions. Vince concentrated on his voice, and his panicky thoughts slowly faded to black. “There are… options.”

Vince recalled what he heard from Nikki through the haze of pain and fear, thoroughly separating his actual words from emotions connected with him, locking the emotions down in the farthest corner of his mind, safely contained from other people and creatures with human appearances. Never show anyone your weaknesses, he had come to realise during his short stay on this Earth.

Gesturing “restless spirit” to Mick turned out to be quite a challenge and probably looked very funny, but not to the two of them. Mick smiled a couple of times at Vince’s clumsy gestures, but actually tried to understand him. It would be easier to just give Vince his voice back, of course, but it somehow didn’t occur to the demon. Vince appreciated the effort nonetheless.

Finally flapping his hands and drawing shapes in the air did their job, as Mick frowned in confusion and said unconfidently: “Ghosts?”

Vince nodded energetically.

“Ah, that,” Mick sighed. “I swear, one day I will mute Nikki for good. He talks too much about things he knows too little about.”

_So it was all wrong?_ A little spring of hope perked up in Vince’s chest. _No one who’s left Heaven can come back_, Vince tramped the spring into the ground mercilessly, but it was harder than he expected. It kept unbending once he moved away his metaphorical shoe.

“Sorry, kid,” Mick interrupted his struggles, and with his words grabbed the spring and pulled out the string in one swift movement, so swift it didn’t even hurt much. “You may not finish your transformation, yes. But it would hurt much more. You will practically doom yourself to eternal suffering. And I know you won’t believe me now, but life as a demon and even as a ghost is not that bad. There is a much worse fate for a fallen angel”.

_What fate_, Vince wanted to cry out, but could only exhale loudly. Mick turned away from him, obviously not willing to continue the conversation. Oh no, Vince wasn’t going to let him just walk away. Not like that. Not in such a moment.

Vince stretched out his hand and tapped Mick on the side.

“What?” Mick looked at him, and there was a slightly darker shade in his eyes, a slightly grimmer tone in his voice, and Vince’s hand dropped onto the side of the bath and remained there. It wasn’t like when he revolted to wearing Nikki’s t-shirt. That was a trifle, and now – now they reached something way more serious.

Alright. Okay. If Mick didn’t tell him, he’d find it out on his own.

“No more questions?” Mick grinned, but his grin lost its spark of sincerity. “Good. Here’s soap – I suppose you already know what it is? No? Wash your body with it. Put it in water, then roll around in your hands a bit, then apply to other body parts. And this,” – he pointed at a bottle on the edge of the bath, “is shampoo. It’s for hair. Just pour some on it and rub it in for a couple of minutes, then wash it off. You’re going to be stuck within this vessel for a long time, better learn how to take care of it. Got it?”

Vince nodded.

“Good. I’m not going to bathe you myself like some goddamn kid who shit his pants. You’ll do it yourself, and I’ll be outside, and the moment-” he grabbed Vince’s chin and pushed it up, forcing him to look into his eyes, soak up their clear cold blueness, “-do you hear me, the _moment_ I feel you do yourself any harm, even slip in the bath, I will come, and you will regret it. Got it?”

Unable to nod this time, Vince opened and closed his eyes, breaking their eye contact with an incredible effort.

“Good boy,” Mick released his chin and ruffled his hair roughly. Electric charge went through Vince again, but this time he barely noticed it, still trying to break free from the hypnotizing power of Mick’s eyes.

Mick headed to the door, opened it and turned back to Vince.

“By the way,” he said unexpectedly carefully, “have you decided on a name already?”

Vince blinked helplessly for a couple of seconds before Mick with a “shit, I forgot” waved his hand, returning his ability to speak.

“I,” the first words were hoarse and quiet, “I, I’ve been calling myself Vince all this time. I saw it on a on a huge picture not far from… not far from _that place_. The human there also had blond hair.”

“Vince then,” Mick smiled. “Nice name. I’ll pass it to the boys.”

When he left, a weight was as though was lifted from Vince’s shoulders. He hadn’t realised how much his presence was weighing on him, how much pure tension hung in the air when Mick was in the room. Now that he was gone, it was like a breath of fresh air.

Vince leaned back onto the bath side, sliding down deeper into the water up to his chin, and inhaled slowly. The water was warm and dulled the pain. And Vince _finally_ wasn’t restrained.

It felt good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been exactly three months since i last posted, and i have nothing to say for myself


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: self-harm, graphic descriptions of violence

When Vince woke up, the water had already gone cold.

He jerked up, not understanding where he was, and would almost dip his head in the water if not for the small size of the bath. Blood that had settled down on the bottom stirred up, coloring the water in a sickly yellowish shade.

Vince looked around the room - he was alone in there - then climbed over the edge of the bath and hobbled to the door, leaving puddles on the floor. He turned the knob slowly, wincing at the sound it made, and opened the door just a little, just to peek outside.

No one was there.

Vince opened the door wider and examined the empty corridor. On the floor in front of the bathroom he saw his own bloody traces from last night, and they made everything that had happened to him come to mind, drowning Vince in painfully bright, detailed pictures and loud, harsh words.

He told Mick his name, he recalled. And Mick promised to “pass it to the boys”.

The mere thought of Nikki saying his name – pronouncing it with his own lips, with the same characteristic drawl he talked to him in _that_ night - was revolting to Vince. He shouldn’t have revealed his name to Mick. He should have kept silent. It was better when they just called him “angel”, even though he wasn’t one already. It was a minor relief, but a relief nevertheless. It showed that he was different from them. That he still had some Heaven in him left.

Now he had a name, the only thing he managed to hide from them, to call it completely _his_; now he had a name, a simple, two-syllable, completely human name, and others were going to know him by it, like a mortal, like an earthly creature, like a de-

Vince clutched his head so hard it started to hurt. Pain was good; pain was familiar; pain was friendly.

His gaze wandered around the room and lingered on the cupboard above the sink. Vince limped towards it, tried to open it, but it turned out to be locked. _Who the fuck locks their bathroom cupboards_, he felt a wave of irrationally intense anger rising up in his chest, and Vince yanked the door knob in frustration.

It broke off, hit Vince on the head and fell onto the floor with a loud bang and a sound of glass shattering. Vince stumbled back, covering his head, until the back of his knees felt the cold edge of the bathtub. He fell back in the bath, splashing the water onto the floor and hitting his head on the wall.

A couple of minutes later, when sharp pain in Vince’s lower part of the body and throbbing in his head dulled down, he dragged himself out of the bath and plopped down on a toilet, estimating the damage. The floor was covered in water, but the clothes Mick had brought him remained miraculously dry. The cupboard door was lying on the floor with the mirror up. It broke into a few smaller pieces.

Vince picked up the shards so as not to accidentally step on them. He was going to settle them on the counter next to his clothes, but cast a quick glance onto them and dropped them right back on the floor, dangerously close to his bare feet.

His hair started to darken at the tips.

Vince knew for sure this wasn’t just a mortal vessel thing. A vessel’s dyed hair was supposed to start darkening at the roots, not at the tips. Vince let out a shaky sigh, only now realizing why all demons had pitch-black hair.

He was going to have it too.

Not paying attention to the shards hurting his feet, Vince limped to the cupboard, frantically searching for something that could help him. It was there. He could feel its cold steely sharpness inside. It called him.

He cut his finger on the little blade lying in the farthest corner of the cupboard. Vince pulled it out oh so carefully, balanced it on his finger. What an unfortunate coincidence, a wicked thought crossed his mind. Mick had been trying so hard to stop him from killing himself, and all his efforts were now going to waste. _What a pity_.

Vince glanced back at the door, making sure no one was there, and then began chopping off the darkened tips of his hair. The blade was too small for that and Vince’s fingers soon started bleeding, but he didn’t pay attention. Away with the demon in his body. He wasn’t welcome, he wasn’t going to get anything from him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get Vince. Vince would rather die than let him.

His hair, once so pretty, was now sticky and sloppily cut, and Vince felt a pang of regret. He let himself indulge in it it for a moment before proceeding to the next part. An image of Mick popped up in his mind, looking at Vince judgmentally with those clear blue eyes, but he pushed it out of his thoughts. To hell with Mick. Two-three quick movements – and it all would be over. Mick wouldn’t have time to stop him, hard as he tried.

Vince stretched out his left hand, examining the positions of veins under the paper-thin skin of his wrist. He held up the blade and pressed it into his skin right above one of the thickest ones. He wanted to press it deeper, but found himself hesitating for no reason and, angry at himself, slashed his arm from his wrist across to his elbow, leaving a deep cut that slowly but surely started oozing blood.

Vince looked at it as it was dripping down on the floor, mesmerized. Drops of blood were falling down and diluting in the puddles, his bleeding more and more intense. How did he still have so many of it left when most of the time he had spent in this house he had been bleeding?

But it was not enough. Too slow, too little. Vince slashed his arm one more time, drawing a cross of sorts on his skin. It swelled up immediately, one more trickle of blood painting the floor red.

He tried to put the blade in his other hand and do the same to the right, but his fingers, slippery with blood and weak from pain that slowly started to build up behind the cuts, couldn’t hold onto the thin piece of metal. Vince looked at it for a minute or two, a chaos of thoughts in his head, all swirling and darting back and forth up to the point where they made his head ache. So many of them, and he couldn’t get a single one concise or coherent.

Then he brought the blade up to his neck and pressed in lightly. A droplet of blood rolled down his neck and settled on his collarbone. _Come on_, the very familiar voice in his head said, the one Vince had been trying so thoroughly to mute. _Come on, press harder. You wanted it so badly. Don’t miss the chance._

Vince’s hand started shaking. He grasped it with his other hand, but to no avail. The blade he clutched between his fingers vibrated slightly, warm and bloody. So attractive in its deadliness. So… frightening.

Vince raised it back to his throat again, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t position the blade against his neck. Tears prickled in his eyes, tears of fear, hate, contempt of his own cowardice. He couldn’t even kill himself to rid the Earth of one more demon, let alone others.

Vince tried to recall the feverish dedication he experienced when he tried to kill himself not once, not twice, but numerous times. Only its echoes came to the surface of his fogged memories, but it was enough. Enough, because now it seemed terrifying.

It wasn’t dedication. It was an _obsession_.

Vince dropped the blade and kicked it away. He hurt his foot, but didn’t even notice it. He slumped onto the toilet seat and closed his eyes. Two words were bouncing back and forth in his mind.

_Weak. Weak and pathetic._

Blood still streamed down his arm, but much less of it now – the cuts began to heal, too soon, too quickly. Vince watched indifferently the edges of the cuts grow together, leaving red swollen lines on his arm. It’s going to scar horrifically, he had a detached thought.

Wait. If it was going to scar, then everyone would be able to see it. Mick, especially. Who very clearly forbade him to do exactly this thing.

Shit. Shit, shit_, shit._

Vince glanced at the door, cold fear rising in his chest. Mick was terrifying enough even in his calm state of mind. Not physically – his human form was barely taller than Vince’s and even thinner, - but even humans, who couldn’t step beyond their five senses, could feel the innate dread he gave off, let alone demons and angels. His anger would probably make Vince regret not killing himself. Not even probably. Most likely.

He looked around, panicking, trying to find the blade, to finish what he started, but it was long gone under a machine with a round window, atop of which his clothes were lying. Dropping on his knees in front of it and trying to stick a hand under it only resulted in his hand almost getting stuck and his knees getting hurt by little pieces of glass floating around. The water on the floor was slowly seeping into the corridor, and soon someone would definitely notice it and come check up on him. Which was the last thing Vince, with his hands and knees bloody and his hair cut sloppily, needed at the moment.

_Wait_, a thought flashed through his mind, _hadn’t Mick said that he would feel it if Vince hurt himself? Why hadn’t he come already then?_

Vince inhaled shakily, trying not to fall into a pit of panic and irrational decisions. Mick would have already come if he could feel Vince’s pain. Yet, he wasn’t there. Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe if Vince played it cool, he wouldn’t notice at all. Maybe.

Vince fished out a suspiciously stinking mop from behind the toilet and wiped the water together with blood. He swept shards of glass and blackened hair under the strange machine, out of sight. The floor still remained stained, but it looked not worse than before – the demons seemed to not really care about tidiness. The mop was completely ruined, though, and followed glass and hair under the machine. Vince only hoped no one would try to move it in the foreseeable future.

Then Vince climbed into the bath again, shivering in cold water, and began washing.

* * *

Feeling clean was, unexpectedly, a very pleasant feeling. So this was what Tommy and Mick meant when they talked about providing his vessel’s well-being. Life was way easier when he hadn’t had a physical form, but also much blander. He couldn’t feel pain, but also couldn’t really appreciate the pleasure of not having it.

Mick’s pants were a little too tight for him, but not to the point of being uncomfortable. Tommy’s t-shirt, on the other hand, almost reached Vince’s knees, so he had to tuck it into the pants so as not to feel like an oversized human toddler.

He spent too much time picking tiny pieces of glass out of his feet, those that he had been too busy last night to pay attention to. Now that his emotions raged themselves out, and the empty, apathetic calmness that comes after a huge outburst replaced them, his body decided to remind him how badly he had treated it the night before.

The cuts on his arm had healed, but the scars, as he anticipated, hadn’t gone away, now like thick red threads on his skin. There was no way in hell Mick couldn’t notice them the second he saw Vince. How stupid he had been, Vince scolded himself wearily. He should have cut his thighs, the cuts would have been hidden by pants.

Vince would gladly spend the rest of his days in this bathroom if that meant not to have any contact with Nikki in any way. But that also meant no contact with Tommy, which he found slightly upsetting, and no contact with Mick, which was really intimidating. No one knew what Vince could expect from him, and the only sure-fire way to know was to ask the demon himself. More than that, it meant no freedom which could possibly lie just behind those walls, just a door away from him. So, after about half an hour of lingering and coming up with various dialogue options in his head, Vince took a deep breath and opened the door a little.

He observed the empty corridor through the gap, noticing his bloody traces remaining on the floor. No one seemed to care about cleanliness in this house.

Then Vince dared to open the door and step outside.

His every movement was accompanied by dull pain rising between his legs and shooting upwards in sharp pangs with each step. Nikki must have fucked him up down there so much that it couldn’t heal even more than a day (Vince assumed that’s how much time had passed) after that. Even his cuts took only a few hours. Interesting how he couldn’t heal a simple, not very deep cut in his shoulder for the whole night, and now-

_It’s not interesting_, Vince cut himself off. _It’s perfectly clear why_.

Vince looked around, trying to figure out where he was and where the door out could be. The corridor seemed to connect bathroom on its one side and his cell, oh, sorry, _bedroom_, on the other. There was another door next to his – probably a bedroom as well. He didn’t remember any stairs on his way here, so the door out should be somewhere near. Somewhere in this corridor. He just needed to look…

There was no other door. Only two bedroom doors on the other side and one to the toilet.

Maybe the door out was somewhere in that other bedroom? It had to be, right? The demons needed one to go out anyway. Or was walking through walls their another ability Vince wasn’t aware of?..

No, Vince pushed the thought away, that was probably bullshit. The door out must be behind that closed door. Vince headed towards it. His “bedroom” door was half-open, and there he saw the bloody bed he spent so much time in. Nobody bothered to change the sheets, and all the blood he lost was there, on the sheets, on the floor, even on the wall above the bed. Damn, had he been lying there for more than a day? It looked and smelled like a butchery. He shouldn’t have survived after losing so much blood. A human definitely wouldn’t.

Vince sneaked to the other door and pressed his ear to it, trying to hear anything. The voices were muffled, but the intonations were unmistakable. Tommy and Nikki.

The second Vince heard Nikki’s husky voice the pain in his lower part of the body flared up, almost making him fall onto his knees right in front of the door. Breathing heavily, Vince managed to step back and lean on the wall, waiting for the fit of pain to pass.

It never did, because the door opened and Nikki appeared in the doorway.

“Oh my, what do we have here,” Nikki smiled like a shark, his slightly pointy teeth only adding to the image. “Who let you out of your room, angel? I’ll have to take you back. You’re still not tamed enough to walk around on your own.”

_Tamed_ rang in Vince’s ears, louder with every second. Vince looked at Nikki who kept talking, and couldn’t hear a word he was saying. _You’re not tamed enough_, he only heard, again and again, and the louder it was, the angrier he became. Everything in front of his eyes went blurry except Nikki’s face – it stood out, his features precise and bright.

Like an aim.

Vince’s fist landed right on Nikki’s jaw. It shut him up immediately and made him step back to stay on his feet. When he regained balance, Vince was already waiting for him with another punch, this time in the nose. It cracked audibly under Vince’s fist, to his immense pleasure. Nikki jumped back, his hand flying up to his nose. It opened his stomach for another punch, which Vince promptly delivered. Nikki tripped over and fell onto his back, and Vince was already there, quick like an arrow, pressing him to the ground with his knees and landing punch after punch, in the nose, in the eyes, everywhere he could reach, until his knuckles bled with both his own blood and Nikki’s. Nikki’s hands tried to hold his wrists weakly and failed, falling onto his face to cover his eyes.

There was a scream at the background, and someone grabbed Vince by the shoulders and yanked back, pulling him away from Nikki. Vince twisted in the grip, adrenaline still rushing in his veins, the image of Nikki’s face that “could get him all the chicks” before his eyes. Now bloody and ruined, it was pumping him up, calling him back, just one more punch-

Vince twisted again, trying to wrest out of the grip, but all in vain. He turned his head and saw Tommy behind him struggling to keep him in place, his expression frightened. _Of course_, who else it was gonna be, Vince thought bitterly. Who was he to Tommy, and who was Nikki.

Vince kicked Tommy in the shin. He hissed but didn’t let go, waiting for Nikki to get up. But Nikki still lay on the ground and… what, _smiled_?

“Look at yourself, V-i-n-n-i-e,” he spelled out every letter of his name, speaking so clearly it seemed Vince’s punches hadn’t harmed him at all. Maybe they really didn’t. “I’m serious, look at yourself in the mirror.”

Tommy released him, turned him around and went “oh my god, dude”. And also smiled.

“What the fuck did you-“ Vince looked around feverishly, searching for the mirror, located one in the corner and rushed towards it, something in his chest going cold, because he already _knew_ what he would see, he knew and refused to believe.

His reflection looked back at him with pitch-black eyes.

Vince only caught a second, and then his eyes turned into hazel again, and his anger faded away as quickly as came. Desperation came instead. Not a sulking and miserable desperation, but a distraught, agitated kind of it.

Vince unconsciously brought his hand up to the mirror and touched his reflection, blinked a couple of times. Hazel, still hazel. Maybe he was seeing things? But Nikki and Tommy also saw it. It couldn’t be the mirror.

Vince shattered it with his bare fist. A sharp spike of pain went through his arm, and the shards cut his bare feet. He didn’t notice. He didn’t care.

“Wow, wow, man,” he heard Tommy’s voice somewhere behind him, “cool down!”

He turned around and punched Tommy too, with his knuckles full of glass. Tommy yelped and recoiled, and then Nikki appeared in front of Vince and delivered such a powerful blow to his stomach that it made Vince’s back hit the wall as he was gasping helplessly for breath. Nikki wanted to say something, he even opened his mouth already, but a sharp, loud sound, the one Vince had heard last morning, drowned out his words. Then Vince’s shoulder started to hurt. Something little and sharp pierced it.

The whole thing was probably over in a second, but for Vince it felt like a lifetime. He turned his head and saw a pothole in the wall right above his shoulder, and then he was pushed onto the floor and pinned down to it by Nikki’s body. He could hear his broken breathing and whispered curses. Tommy fell down next to them. His hair was tickling Vince’s nose.

Then the sound repeated, and that single pothole was joined by a dozen more, drawing an intricate ornament on the wall. Vince could see this from behind Nikki’s hair that was falling on his face. It smelled something flowery. Pieces of the wall fell right on Nikki’s back who cursed quietly every time.

Then the sound stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Nikki spent a whole extra minute on top of Vince (Vince counted, trying to calm his beating heart), then rolled off carefully and crawled to the window, making sure he wasn’t raising his head too high. He peeked out for a moment and the sound went off again. Vince imagined Nikki’s forehead with the same pothole as on the wall, slowly filling up with blood which then leaked down his face, his eyes now empty, like a doll’s. The image was strangely satisfying.

Unfortunately, Nikki ducked quickly, and the new pothole appeared among those on the wall.

“Did you see them?” Tommy asked anxiously, still lying on the floor with his hands covering his head.

“They shot from a white truck. Didn’t catch anything else. Have they found a sniper for their gang or what? They weren’t nearly as precise last time.”

“Probably. Or better gear.”

Nikki once again peered into the window and immediately pulled back. This time, though, there was no sound.

“They drove away,” he said finally and got up. Tommy followed suit. Vince sat up on the floor, watching them in silent shock. “Only fucking pussies shoot from the distance and don’t get into an honest fight!”

“If not for the bullets, I would fucking show them what’s what!” Tommy flared up too. “Cowards! All angels are cowards! Not you,” – he pointed at Vince, - “you’re one crazy motherfucker. But all other angels are cowards!”

Vince blinked in confusion - was that supposed to be a compliment? – but forgot about it that very moment. Something more important was going on right in front of him, and he didn’t understand a thing.

He cleared his throat and spoke.

“What the fuck?”

Nikki and Tommy turned their heads to him simultaneously, both acting like they just saw Vince over there.

“Should I?..” Nikki began gingerly. Tommy thought for a second and nodded.

“Can’t keep him in the dark for so long. Not now that he already saw it.”

“Alright.” Nikki stepped towards Vince, and the latter had to suppress his growing desire to move away from him. Nikki’s face had already started to heal, bruises left by Vince’s fists going yellow and then disappearing in the matter of minutes.

Nikki plopped down on the floor in front of him to get on Vince’s level. Vince didn’t want to look at his face, especially so close, but he didn’t move back. It was strangely alluring at the same time, as though it could replace the mask with hungry eyes from his memories; it called, _remember me instead_.

_No,_ Vince cut himself off. He wasn’t going to forget what the demon did to him, even if he saved his life after that. He might have done it for whatever reason, but Vince refused to be indebted to him. He didn’t ask Nikki to do it. He wasn’t going to let him get away with what he had done to him just because of that.

“So I’ve told you about one way a fallen angel can go. Ghosts, all that stuff. I guess since you haven’t finished the job in the bathroom,” he pointed at Vince’s scars which he had forgotten to hide in the heat of the moment, “you are not interested in going that way.”

“I’m not strong enough for that,” Vince said quietly. “I wish I could.”

“Bullshit,” Nikki cut him off. “That’s the path of cowards. Not being able to face the consequences of your crime. Not finishing the transformation. There’s another path. That one – for traitors.”

“Traitors,” Tommy giggled behind his back. Vince couldn’t help but smile a little. Nikki gracefully ignored both of them.

“They think they will never become demons if they turn against them. Can’t be the bad guy when you’re killing other bad guys, huh? So they gather together, find people gullible enough to believe their stories about angels and demons, organize cults, organizations, whatever, and start hunting us. Or, rather, try to hunt us. Not a single one have succeeded yet.”

“I guess,” Vince murmured, staring intently at a point between Nikki’s eyes. He didn’t want to show his fear, but he knew if he looked into those eyes once again, he would lose it. He was hanging on a very thin thread already, his heart beating so fast it as though was trying to get out of his ribcage. The mere sight of Nikki made the most terrible memories, the ones he thought he had cut out with the blade and left in the puddle of blood on the bathroom floor, arise in his mind.

“Listen, Nik, it’s gonna be ages until you get to the point,” Tommy interrupted him. “Cut all those pompous words out. Or better, let me finish.”

He glanced quickly at Vince, and he was almost sure he saw concern in Tommy’s eyes.

Nikki looked at Tommy long and hard, then moved his gaze to Vince, and he barely managed to keep his breath even. Breathe in and out, in and out. Concentrate on the breathing, not on those strikingly green eyes right in front of him that looked at him whimpering from pain and enjoyed it. Vince could bet they would enjoy it even now.

“Alright,” he said suddenly, moving away from Vince. It felt like a breath of fresh air. “You tell him.”

“So, long story short,” Tommy started lively, “those dudes got guns with holy bullets which are not exactly deadly but a huge pain in the ass nevertheless. And they are going round the Earth trying to find freshly fallen angels and nip the new demon in the bud. Since fallen angels are at first invincible and basically all of them try some form of suicide on arrival, it’s not hard, just look over the newspapers in search of miraculous survivals. They found you too – you had left a pretty noticeable trace of failed suicides.”

“Couldn’t even kill myself properly,” Vince murmured bitterly.

“Yeah, that’s the point, you couldn’t! Otherwise there would be no demons on Earth. God gives you time to think for yourself and choose your own fate. That’s the privilege of being a demon – a right to choose.”

Vince blinked in confusion. So he would have had a choice if the demons hadn’t found him? And after that they dared to talk about ”a right to choose”?

“So yeah, we found you a little bit earlier than they did. We saved your angelic ass from being killed pretty much immediately. You didn’t understand it then, but we were trying to be gentle.”

“Gentle?” the fight in Vince’s mind was anything but gentle. “You _stabbed_ me!” He turned to Nikki, accidentally looked him in the eyes and had to immediately move his gaze away.

“And you stabbed _me_.” Nikki said from behind Tommy’s back. His voice again made Vince shudder. “We’re square.”

“For us to be square I need to cut a hole in you and fuck you in it!”

The silence that followed his words was deafening.

“Hm,” Nikki finally said. “Kinky.”

“What?” Vince frowned.

“Kinky,” Nikki repeated, openly enjoying Vince’s and Tommy’s expressions. “It means sexually arousing. But for real, if you ever wanna take your revenge, I won’t fight back.”

Vince imagined it and winced. It looked bad even in his head.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t need revenge. I just want to- want to-“ he stopped. One more word – and he was going to let out hysteric sobs he suppressed in his chest up to this moment. He couldn’t be there anymore. He couldn’t see _him_ anymore. He couldn’t separate that face, those eyes, from those in his memories, those that were soaking up his pain and tears and enjoying it. Nikki wanted to see him suffer that night. He wanted to hurt him again.

Vince sprang on his feet and stormed away to the bathroom, his only refuge.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is small, but it's necessary for plot purposes. The chapter itself is pretty intense. I hope you like it!
> 
> Warnings: self-harm tendencies, violence

The second the lock in the door clicked, the remains of Vince’s willpower left him. It was like an iron rod that previously kept him up was pulled out of his spine. He collapsed onto the floor.

He last called _Him_ when Nikki was doing his thing… no, when Nikki was _raping_ him. He called, barely conscious from pain, clawing onto the remains of his hope, delusional despite the torture he got that was undeserved and unfair. He begged _Him_ to reply, just to reply, to show _He_ was still there, still with his child, child that had gone the wrong way but was his flesh and blood nevertheless.

He called, and heard nothing.

And now this. Black eyes and black hair. Had he finished the transformation? His anger went away the second Vince saw what it had done to him; his eyes again turned hazel. If it lasted for just a couple of seconds, did it still count?

Vince grabbed a stray strand of hair and brought it in front of his eyes. The tips started to darken again, just an inch. For now.

He dropped the strand and buried his face in his knees. No use to cut these too, the darkening tips would just come back the next day, when he would see Nikki again and feel something far from angelic.

It was all about the feelings, really. He felt a lot since he had fallen. Remorse at first, then fear, then anger. All low, negative, ungodly feelings. All incredibly, amazingly human.

Vince closed his eyes and called _Him_. One last time. One last try.

He waited, and waited, and waited. One more minute, he kept telling himself. Just one more minute. _He_ might have been busy. _He_ might be too far way to hear Vince call him. _He_ might-

There was nothing but emptiness and silence. No thoughts, no feelings, nothing. Empty - that’s all Vince was feeling at the moment. Too tired for anger, too indifferent for fear, and sure as hell too pissed for remorse.

Emptiness grew in his chest, leaked into other parts of his body and enveloped him whole.

***

Vince didn’t know how much time he had spent sitting on the floor staring at the wall when a sharp knock on the door pulled him out of his personal void.

“Occupied!” he shouted, his voice hoarse from hours of silence. Or were they minutes?

“No shit!” a very familiar voice replied. Vince froze on place. Nikki.

Nikki waited a few seconds, then pulled the door handle impatiently. “Open the door.”

“For what?” Vince said so quietly he was pretty sure he only pronounced it soundlessly with his lips. But Nikki heard him.

“To talk.” He sounded like he was trying to be as non-threatening as possible, and failed spectacularly – his overly calm, relaxed tone only added suspicion in Vince’s eyes. “Listen, I’m not gonna do you any ha-“

Vince opened the door so abruptly Nikki almost fell on him and had to grab the wall to keep balance.

“Can I come in?” he said once he regained balance. Vince looked at him, examining his face, trying to see behind his nonchalant expression.

“Yes.” He released the door handle and stepped back.

“Where is the blade?” Nikki asked suddenly. “The one you did _that_,” he ponted at Vince’s scars, “with.”

“Under the thing.” Vince replied shortly, waving his hand in the direction of the unknown machine. He wasn’t taking his eyes off Nikki even for a second.

“Ah, that’s a washing machine.” Nikki chuckled, but under Vince’s sharp, examining gaze his smile soon shrunk and disappeared. “Listen, I-“

“Hit me,” Vince interrupted him.

Nikki’s jaw went slack. “What?”

“Hit me,” Vince gave his words some thought and added, “please.”

“Listen, I’m not gonna do anything, I just wanted to say-“

“Hit me!” Vince screamed and slapped Nikki in the face, hard and fast. Nikki’s hands flew up automatically, pushing Vince away. Vince hit his back on the “washing machine”, but it was nothing. A trifle.

“Vince, what the fuck-“

“Don’t call me that!” Vince hit him again, this time landing a punch on his jaw. “It’s mine! Don’t touch it!”

Vince wanted to anger him. To make him lose control. He wanted to see that mask, those eyes hungry for pain again.

It worked.

“Well, you fucking asked for it!” Nikki grabbed a fistful of Vince’s hair and hit his face on the corner of the washing machine. He let Vince go immediately afterwards and opened his mouth to… what, apologize? Say “You deserve it”?

Vince didn’t care. It felt good. It felt familiar.

“Do it again,” He smiled maniacally. “Come on!”

“Not before you explain!” Nikki stepped back, pushing Vince away from him. Vince reveled in the sight of his confused, guilty face. Vince was being hurt, but he was the one in charge, and God, did it feel good.

“I don’t want to be afraid of you,” Vince said, words coming to him slowly, like through a fog.

“And how the hell beating you up will help that?” Nikki raised his eyebrows, but his skeptical gaze failed to make Vince stop.

“You said I can take my revenge anytime. You owe me. This is my revenge.” Vince breathed so heavily he as though had run a mile. The emptiness in his chest was slowly shrinking, supplanted by manic excitement. “Hit me!” he shouted again and aimed another blow at Nikki.

“Alright! Alright, motherfucker!” Nikki grabbed Vince’s arm bare inches away from his face. His eyes were slowly blackening, mixing with his natural green color, and now their color reminded Vince of muddy swamp water. “But don’t you dare go complaining to Mick after that!”

Nikki was angry, and Vince knew that, and he looked, and looked, and looked at him, drinking in the expression on his face. He didn’t even flinch when he received a powerful slap on the cheek. Another one threw his head in the opposite direction, his hair fell onto his face, covering his eyes, and Vince noticed it added a few more inches of black. He brushed his hair off his face. He needed to see Nikki.

Nikki grabbed Vince by the shoulders and shoved him back, making him hit the “washing machine” again. A spike of pain in his back spread onto his entire torso. Then a knee in his stomach pushed all air out of Vince’s lungs, just like the time Nikki grabbed his throat to make him obedient. Good. _Good_. He gasped for air, clutching at Nikki’s arms so he wouldn’t bend over in pain. He couldn’t take his eyes off Nikki, even for a second.

“Are you satisfied?” Nikki hissed, grabbing Vince’s hair and tilting his head. “Are you satisfied, angel?”

_Angel._ A shudder run down Vince’s spine. He called him angel then; he did it now, even having seen his black eyes and darkening hair. Angel. Huh.

Vince smiled widely and shook his head.

“Well, I am!” Nikki released him and retreated to the door. He didn’t leave, though.

Vince wiped a trail of blood under his nose. His lip bled too, the taste of iron lingering in his mouth.

Here was Nikki, scary, tall, strong Nikki, Nikki, who had cut him, had hit him, had raped him. He was there, and he was – scared. Scared of him, of Vince. He tried to hide that, of course, but now Vince could see that through his eyes, through the mask he was always wearing.

And under that mask Nikki wasn’t scary or threatening. He was lost.

“Did you like it now?” Vince asked, his voice unexpectedly hoarse. “The desecration?”

Nikki shook his head slowly.

“Nothing to desecrate here anymore.” And then he smiled. “I like you much more this way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream at me on my tumblr @arnold-layne :)


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